Consultation on Continuous Improvement Procedure open

Participate in the consultation on the revised Continuous Improvement Procedure to align with ISO 17065 Conformity assessment — Requirements for bodies certifying products, processes and services. The consultation is open from 18 December 2024 – 24 January 2025.

The general certification body requirements (FSC-STD-20-001) are currently amended to ensure conformity with the ISO standard 17065 for bodies certifying products, processes and services. These amendments have triggered the need to align requirements in the Continuous Improvement Procedure.

FSC is aligning with ISO 17065 requirements due to Regulation (EC) 765/2008 on Requirements for Accreditation and Market Surveillance at the European Economic Area (EEA) and at the United Kingdom (UK) level and FSC thus needs to adapt its requirements in order to operate within EEA and UK.

Key changes

The following is an overview of the key changes:

• Requirements for handling of nonconformities will follow the general requirements for certification bodies (as defined in FSC-STD-20-001)
•  The specific certification body requirements will be moved to an Annex of FSC-STD-20-007 after the consultation
• Editorial changes are introduced to align the concept and terminology with ISO requirements

Webinars

FSC will be conducting webinars to present the draft documents and to discuss the key changes. Please register below for the webinars.

Consultation webinar on FSC accreditation standards revision (session repeated but in different languages):

Wednesday, 15 January 2025 at 21.00-22.00.00 CET (2.00pm-3.00pm CST) in Spanish only.  Register here.

Thursday, 16 January 2025 at 16:00 – 17:00 CET in English only.  Register here. 

To access the consultation, please click for English and Spanish version. We are looking forward to your participation!