The redeveloped MCS installer scheme

What actually changed

The old scheme was a relationship between you and a certification body, with MCS behind it writing standards. The redeveloped Scheme puts MCS directly into the process. It checks the business, it holds a call with you, and it signs a contract with you at the end. Your certification body still does the technical assessment, but it is no longer the only organisation looking at your business.

The practical consequence is that there is now a stage you can fail on things that have nothing to do with pipework: how the company is financed, who controls it, what it has done under MCS before, and what it says about itself online.

The sequence, end to end

One application, several organisations. You submit to your certification body and everything else follows from that - you never apply to MCS separately.

• ·You apply to your chosen certification body.
• ·They pass the application to MCS. You are assigned an MCS account manager, who contacts you directly.
• ·The onboarding call - about fifteen minutes, on the Customer Commitment and the Installer Operating Requirements and how they are embedded in your operations.
• ·MCS Scheme checks on the business itself.
• ·Your certification body carries out its assessment: a site-based installation assessment plus a review of your processes and controls.
• ·You answer any non-conformities with a root cause and a correction, and your certification body closes them.
• ·Your MID profile is set up and MCS is notified.
• ·MCS issues the Installer Agreement. Once it is signed by a Licensee in your business and co-signed by MCS, you are certified - and only then do you get access to the MCS Installations Database.

What the Scheme checks look at

MCS states four areas. What varies is business type: some checks apply only to limited companies, limited partnerships and PLCs because sole traders and non-limited companies are not listed at Companies House, and others are specific to those.

• ·Financial health - whether the company is operating sustainably and responsibly.
• ·Business details - directors, people with significant control, owners, and links to other companies.
• ·Previous certifications - if the business or its key individuals have been MCS certified before, how they performed in the Scheme.
• ·Online presence - how the business appears online, whether any claims are misleading, and customer feedback.

Eligibility, before any of it

There are entry criteria for the business and its controlling persons, and they are absolute rather than graded. No unspent criminal convictions, including those involving violence, dishonesty, fraud, financial misconduct or consumer harm. No convictions that became spent within the last five years. Not currently subject to banning orders, court orders, regulatory restrictions or disqualification orders. And a willingness to give accurate and truthful information throughout Scheme checks.

Read that list before you spend anything. It is a cheaper conversation to have with yourself than with an account manager three weeks in.

The onboarding call is the preparable part

Everything else in the process is either a fact about your business or a technical assessment of a job. The call is the one stage that turns on how well you can articulate something - and that means it is the one stage where preparation changes the outcome rather than just the nerves.

It is not a heat pump exam. The assessor is asking whether the Customer Commitment and the Installer Operating Requirements are things your business does, or things your business has downloaded. The difference shows up in specifics: naming your own consumer code, describing your own complaints process, knowing your own operating scenario.

If you are already certified and moving over

Existing certified installers transition to the redeveloped Scheme through their certification body, and the transition assessment is completed by desktop assessment. Your certification body updates your MID profile to show you have been assessed and approved for the redeveloped Scheme.

One detail catches people out: while that update is happening you lose access to the old version of your MID account, and access to the new one is granted only once a valid Installer Agreement is in place. Plan around a window where you cannot register installations.

Common questions