YDSA-CA CHAIR UPDATE – OCTOBER NEWSLETTER 2023
Published: 31 October 2023
I need to emphasise the hard efforts of the CA team within Glassworks. With Dawn taking the lead on the administration side, Craig offering support in all areas of admin, technical, and systems, and Ross and James working hard to ensure we are technically on top of the whole checking process. Ross, Craig, and James, have also worked specifically hard on the ongoing expectations and requirements of the MCA as well as maintaining the new online Policy and Procedures Manual. Please do try and look at it at least once a month, changes are made in red!
Karen, Craig, and James, along with Charlie Rossiter and David Greening are preparing for the up-coming Stability Audit taking place on 2nd November. This is in addition to our regular annual CA BC Audit, but all CA’s are now having to fit a stability audit in every year.
As I'm sure any CA surveyor will know, the silly season for renewals and midterms starts in mid-February and runs for several months, if there are any logical ways of trying to start new 5 year coding’s that are coming up in that period earlier, to help smooth out the peak for the office and help turn around applications quicker, it would be appreciated!
Checking files - Likewise, one of the biggest issues as checkers we have is reaction time from when a file has been checked and sent back to the surveyor for amendments. Unfortunately, we then regularly have to wait one or two weeks for file updates to be returned. This, while we are obviously all busy, really doesn't help us, you, or the end clients and more importantly our office team, who then get regular calls from owners chasing certificates. So please help us to help you.
Ross and James have been piloting renewals in house and this has I think been a great success. We hope to roll this out further and bring more in house soon.
Streamlining the process from the scv1 to certificate issue are areas we are currently looking to improve, the more the client can fill in the application and pay online the easier it is for the payment to be tracked. This year we have had a number of tracking issues where payments have been made but through an international bank system where the values and references disappear, again we are working to streamline this process to avoid confusion and delays!
As reported before, the MCA are still determined to get WB3 and the new Sports and Pleasure codes out there in 2024. I should pay tribute to both Richard Linford and Ross Wombwell for their attendance at the recent five days of meetings then up-dating the committee on what took place.
I've been working in the background at attempting to get a harmonised Stability Form between all CA's. Although there’s more work to be done, David Greening and myself have managed to narrow it down to two, or at least a potential merger of two forms which we will then be put to the various CA'S for consultation. This to me, if accepted, would make one area of the codes easier across the CA’s.
On the near horizon... we have our AGM and at the time of writing this, most of the committee have indicated they are prepared to be re-elected, and I am very grateful to them for their continued support.
Ben Sutcliffe-Davies
