In this week’s blog we are going to walk you through the new and significantly improved certification coordinator system. Before we begin, there are three general pieces of advice to impart:
- In order to make changes to your Approved Body's certification coordinators without contacting SER, one of the firm’s existing coordinators needs to be logged into the Body admin area. If neither coordinator is available and you need to make urgent changes, please contact us via [email protected]
- If you are looking to add a coordinator that is not yet a registered user of the site, please ensure that they register using the following link before you attempt to add them: https://www.ser-ltd.com/register
- Approved Bodies are still able to have a maximum of two certification coordinators at any one time - this is mainly to avoid confusion at the Local Authority end but also helps with organising and conducting audits
Once logged in, either the primary or alternative coordinator is able to access the relevant area by selecting ‘Certification Coordinators’ followed by ‘Update Certification Coordinators’:
You will be taken to the following screen:
From here, everything should hopefully be fairly self-explanatory. If you are not looking to add or remove a new coordinator but simply wish to change which of the two coordinators is primary and which is alternative, use the ‘Switch’ button.
If you wish to amend the telephone number of either coordinator then you can do using the ‘Update’ option - please note that you cannot change your email address via this section - when a Registered User that is also a certification coordinator changes their email address via the ‘Change Your Details’ section of their homepage as below, this will automatically be reflected in the certification coordinator section.
If the primary certification coordinator is logged in they are also able to unassign the current alternative coordinator (this is useful if they have left the firm but a replacement as alternative coordinator has not yet been appointed) or reassign the role of alternative coordinator to someone else in the Approved Body. Please note that as mentioned previously the new coordinator will need to already be a registered user on the site.
If the firm currently only has one registered coordinator but wishes to add a second, the existing coordinator can add an alternative coordinator here too.
If the alternative coordinator is logged in, they are able to switch roles with the current primary coordinator or update the telephone number of either coordinator. They can also unassign or reassign the primary coordinator - if they unassign the primary coordinator, they will automatically become the primary instead.
And that, thankfully, is that. For the vast majority of situations there is now a simple, intuitive method for Approved Bodies to add, remove or change their certification coordinators without having to contact SER - though we are of course happy to help you with any queries you have!
Finally: we became aware of the need for the coordinator section to be improved primarily because we attempted to write an instructional blog about it only to find that it was such a convoluted and unintuitive process that it was nigh on impossible to write about it clearly and concisely. We would greatly appreciate our members letting us know about other processes within the SER system that feel more difficult than they need to be - it might be that we then write a blog about it to clarify the process, or we might add it to our list of future improvements. Either way, we would love to hear from you via [email protected]!