These Regulations appoint the United Kingdom Accreditation Service to be the National Accreditation Body for the United Kingdom in support of EC Regulation 765/08. By appointing the UKAS as the National Accreditation Body for the UK, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills clarifies to both the conformity assessment industry and the wider business community who the National Accreditation Body is to be, as well as confirming that companies in the United Kingdom will have recourse to accreditation from a National Accreditation Body in the UK.
Regulation 765/08 is intended to boost intra-community trade by supporting the marketing and free movement of goods throughout the European Community and the principle of mutual recognition, that a product lawfully marketed in one Member State, and not subject to Community harmonisation, should be allowed to be marketed in any other Member State. It does this by establishing a system of accreditation that functions by reference to binding rules, thus helping to strengthen mutual confidence between Member States in respect to the competence of conformity assessment bodies and consequently the certificates and test reports issued by them.
