The Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) Forum has seen a 50 per cent rise in the number of construction companies signed up to an SSIP health and safety accreditation scheme since last year with a recent survey of nearly 900 companies showing that 96 per cent were members of an SSIP scheme.

Since its launch in 2009, SSIP has gone from strength to strength and there are now 38 health and safety accreditation schemes in membership. SSIP promotes mutual recognition between member schemes which means that, if a company has already been assessed by one SSIP scheme, it can register with others for a reduced fee without going through a further assessment process in the majority of cases. The aim is to reduce duplication at the first stage of pre-qualification and the SSIP Suppliers Guide to Registration and Table of Equivalences on the SSIP website at www.ssip.org.uk can be used by contractors and suppliers to see if their current health and safety scheme is part of SSIP and which other schemes it is mutually recognised by.