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The Forensic Science Regulator’s Consultation:
Executive Summary and Recommendations
The following Executive Summary is extracted from the Forensic Science Regulator’s Consultation Paper ‘A Review of the Options for the Accreditation of Forensic Practitioners’.
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Summary
This paper reviews the registration of forensic practitioners. It explains the
history behind the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners
(CRFP); registration was established following calls in the 1980s for the
regulation of quality standards in the use of forensic science. The solution, at
the end of the 1990s, to the forensic science regulatory vacuum was to tackle
standards through the single dimension of assessing and registering
individual forensic practitioners.
Since then the regulatory vacuum has been further filled by creating the post
of Forensic Science Regulator supported by a Forensic Science Advisory
Council, the Criminal Procedure Rules, wider acceptance and use of ISO
standards and independent accreditation by the United Kingdom Accreditation
Service, independent certification of quality management systems, Skills for
Justice and the new forensic National Occupational Standards, move by the
Forensic Science Society to become a professional body, the National
Policing Improvement Agency and its programmes of work to develop the use
of forensic science, the forensic science procurement framework with
stipulations on standards, and the Law Commission examination and
proposals for rules governing expert witnesses.
Modern regulation of practitioner competence must take place in light these
advances and the quality standards framework that is being developed to
regulate quality standards at three levels: provider (all law enforcement and
commercial suppliers of forensic services), practitioner and method (forensic
science techniques). Assessment of practitioner competence is best achieved
as part of an assessment of standards across-the-board, not as a stand-alone
evaluation.
The recommendation is for regulation of practitioner competence to be
integrated into the accreditation of broader standards. Such accreditation is in
use now, it is international best practice for forensic laboratories and provides
a model that could work effectively for all sections of the forensic community.
Recommendation
The majority of forensic practitioners work within organisations that will be required to be assessed against ISO standards. These standards already include robust assessments of practitioner competence that will be enhanced further by the roll-out of the new National Occupational Standards and the publication of the Regulator’s industry specific standards. An important component of the assessment process will be the on-going assessment of individual competence in the work-place overlaid by accreditation as evidence of compliance with the standards.
This approach is designed to move standards and the accreditation against them to a new level, with accountability for standards clearly placed on the shoulders of top management. This approach is supported by ACPO and major providers who between them make up the large majority of the practitioner population. It also has the support of the Forensic Science Advisory Council, the NPIA and the Crown Prosecution Service.
The Regulator takes the view that it is unnecessary and disproportionate to demand further levels of practitioner assessment through the CRFP process, and questions what additional benefits, if any, registration with CRFP can add.
The overwhelmingly sensible and most viable option is to use UKAS to assess and accredit against all the standards that are expected, standards that include more than adequate assessment of practitioner competence.
The weakness in this recommended option is the increasing costs that are likely to be placed on sole traders or individual practitioners who opt to become accredited. However, UKAS accreditation will assess them to a wider and higher standard than the current process can. It must also be remembered that a section of this group are expert witnesses who are not full-time forensic practitioners.
The figures provided by UKAS are provisional; it is recommended that UKAS works with the Regulator to develop a fees structure that covers all types of forensic practitioners.
It is important to recognise that individual competence is a product of the culture and quality management approach of the organisation in which someone works, as much as it is a reflection of individual ability. It seems logical, whenever possible, to assess individual competence within the overall assessment of an organisation. This is the standard adopted internationally for forensic science practitioners.
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