Video • 3 mins read
The United Kingdom Accreditation Service and the Office of the Forensic Science Regulator (OFSR) are establishing a development project for the accreditation for ISO/IEC 17025 Conformity assessment – General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories performing speed estimation of vehicles from video evidence as stipulated in Forensic Science Regulator Code of Practice (FSR CoP) version 2 DIG 301 requirements.
From this announcement, UKAS will determine the demand and priority for developing accreditation in this area. Therefore, please could you register your interest in this activity to UKAS via email ([email protected]) by 18th August 2026.
Organisations that wish to participate are asked to provide the following information:
- Name of organisation, Police Force or Commercial entity
- Confirm whether your interest is in assisting with the development of the assessment/or as a potential pilot project applicant
- Status of any current accreditation
- Current involvement in the forensic sector
- Current activity – are you already active in this area and have validated methodology in place and what that is. The scope of the activity that you are interested in applying for (please note that this project encompasses lab-based activities (FSR CoP version 2 DIG-301) only. Scene-based activities (INC-100) including CCTV extraction and test footage are not within the scope of this project).
The minimum criteria required to progress within the first stage of this project is below and to ascertain readiness for participation in this project, please provide copies of the following documentation with your application:
- Quality Manual
- Validation Plans for your proposed scope
- Documented procedures
- Confirmation that the applicant has a Quality Management System aligned to ISO/IEC 17025 in place.
Organisation’s that submit an expression of interest will be invited to attend a meeting of interested parties where the terms of the project will be discussed along with a proposed timeline for key stages and any phased approach process that is deemed necessary. This will include “dry run activities” and could also include group preassessment activities A dry run is an informal collaborative activity designed to trail assessment mechanisms for this activity to ensure that they are suitable and discuss the process and progress with applicants. Following the interested parties meeting, conformity assessment bodies will be required to submit a formal application to UKAS for the scope of accreditation sought and an agreement to the terms and conditions of the pilot programme before their participation is confirmed. There will be an opportunity to ask any scope specific questions on the details of the pilot programme at this stage.
In line with UKAS confidentiality arrangements, assessment content, such as validation or methodology data and information, will not be shared with the FSR project group, but outcomes of the dry run assessments will be shared with the OFSR.
The OFSR has indicated that funding will be available to assist with costs and further details will be available regarding this following the deadline for expressions of interest.
UKAS is currently gauging the potential level of interest in this area so would also like to hear from technical experts that may wish to support UKAS as a stakeholder to provide expertise and support to the development of accreditation criteria and process with the potential of also being utilised as an external Technical Assessor in this technical area.
Please note that submitting an expression of interest does not indicate any commitment to participate in the development project on the part of the interested parties, and nor does the acceptance of an expression of interest commit UKAS to accept the interested party on any future pilot project.