The Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) is to end an exemption that allowed applicants for a CSCS card not to sit a health and safety test in certain circumstances.
Applicants for a CSCS card generally have to achieve a recognised construction related qualification (usually an NVQ or SVQ) as well as pass the Construction Industry Training Board’s (CITB) health, safety and environment test within the last two years.
But CSCS would allow applicants not to sit the CITB test if they had already achieved an SVQ or NVQ within the last two years.
However, CSCS’s director of operations Gordon Jenkins has now announced plans to end the exemption.
Jenkins said: “Accepting the recent completion of an SVQ or NVQ as an exemption to taking the CITB health, safety and environment test is no longer in step with the wishes of the industry and as such the exemption will be withdrawn.”
From 2 September 2019 this exemption will be closed. All applicants will be required to pass the CITB health, safety and environment test regardless of when they obtained their NVQ or SVQ. If applicants have not passed the test, a card will not be issued.
Jenkins added: “CSCS, together with our 35 partner card schemes, are bound by the requirements of the Industrial Strategy for Construction. The Industrial Strategy is overseen by The Construction Leadership Council (CLC) who, in 2015, announced that cards displaying the CSCS logo should only issue skilled cards to applicants who hold nationally recognised construction qualifications and have passed a separate health and safety element.”
For further information on CSCS’s plans to withdraw the exemption to the CITB Health, safety and environment test please visit www.cscs.uk.com/test-exemption
