Hi James, and thanks for your comment.
While I'm always happy to discuss the nuances of BS8901 I'm afraid your point here is fundamentally mistaken. You do not need to apply to anyone or be "accredited" by anyone in order to use BS8901 or claim compliance to it. To quote the standard itself:
"Claiming compliance with this standard
An organization shall be deemed to have complied with this standard if
it has met all relevant requirements in Clauses 5 to 13.
Claims of partial compliance, e.g. to Phase 1 in preparation for an event, may also be made.
NOTE 1 British Standards are worded to enable compliance to be
verified by the first party (the organization), second party (stakeholders)
or an independent third party (such as a certification body)."
It is also not correct to say that the standard is not in use or has not been finalised – BS8901 was launched on the 12th November 2007 and several organisations (including Seventeen) have claimed compliance from that date.
You may be getting confused between compliance and certification. The certification process is still being trialled, but again it is not true to say that "No organisations in the UK [are] accredited" – indeed, our friends at Organise This announced this week that their management system has been certified, and we and the MS Society will follow suit once the certification process has been finalised.
The MS Society deserve tremendous praise for the efforts they have gone to in making their events more sustainable and BS8901 has been invaluable in that process.
If you, or anyone else, would like further clarification on this or would like to discuss this further, please feel free to get in touch with me any time – andrew@seventeenevents.co.uk or 020 7515 8402.
