The top management of the ECG Group are committed to ensure that all of our activities are carried out in an impartial manner – Being impartial, and being perceived to be impartial, is necessary for ECG to deliver our certification that provides confidence.
- We have ensured that all internal and external personnel are aware of the need for impartiality
- All of the ECG decisions are based purely on the objective evidence of conformity (or nonconformity) obtained by the audit team, and that our decisions are not influenced by other interests or by other parties.
- ECG via the design and maintenance of a business risk assessment have now created a process to clearly identify, analyse, evaluate, treat, monitor, and document the risks related to conflict of interests arising from provision of certification including any conflicts arising from our relationships on an ongoing basis. Where there are any threats to impartiality, then ECG have documented within the business risk assessment and are able to demonstrate how we have eliminated or minimised such threats and documented any residual risks
- The business risk assessment covers all potential threats that are identified, whether they arise from within ECG or from the activities of other persons, bodies or organisations. When a relationship poses an unacceptable threat to impartiality (such as a wholly owned subsidiary of ECG requesting certification from its parent), then certification is not provided.
- The ECG top management review any residual risks to determine if it is within the level of acceptable risk and this is ongoing at each management review meeting
- The risk assessment process that we have currently adopted includes the identification of and consultation with appropriate interested parties to give advice on matters affecting impartiality including openness and public perception. The consultation with appropriate interested parties has been balanced with no single interest predominating – this now talks the form of an advisory committee used for consultation for impartiality and membership of technical committees such as BAFE which when used with this business risk assessment is our means of fulfilling are commitment to providing an impartial assessment