Please keep everyone safe by following local and national Covid-19 related restrictions.

CPCS EQA’s and Named Contacts will continue to support you by being flexible in our approach.

Renewal Testing and CITB HS&E Testing

Scotland

For Scotland CITB Health, Safety and Environmental testing operations will be suspended in Pearson Professional Centres from 18 January 2021, CPCS Renew Testing services remain open with good availability.

Where you are unable to meet the CPCS renewal criteria please contact our customer services who will be able to advise you. Call 0300 999 1177 or email cpcs@jobcards.org

Wales

The Welsh Government have agreed with CITB to re-establishing the Health, Safety and Environment testing operations. All Pearson Professional Centres in Wales will be operational from 18 January 2021 and will also be delivering the CPCS Renewal Testing with good availability.

England

The Health, Safety and Environment testing is operational in England, all Pearson Professional Centres are operational and delivering both the CITB Health, Safety and Environmental tests and the CPCS Renewal Tests with good availability

Northern Ireland

CITB Health, Safety and Environmental testing operations will be suspended in Pearson Professional Centres (review mid-February) CPCS renewal testing remains open with good availability.

Internet Test Centres UK

ITC’s generally remain open but could be affected by COVID-19 restrictions and therefore not able to deliver the tests.

Notifications without valid HS&E Tests

We continue to allow tests to be notified in TCMS for individuals who have an out of date HS&E test (2 years), you will be able to issue a 90 day letter of achievement, however, CPCS will not issue a card until the HS&E Test is complete.

For individuals who have never held a CITB HS&E Test, notifications will be held on the system, these individuals will not be allowed an Achievement Letter.

With guidance from industry we will continue to issue a 90 day “achievement letter”, please ensure that any candidates are told that they must prioritise booking of HS&E Tests within the 90 day period, we feel that this is a fair amount of time. From the testing undertaken there is sufficient availability to achieve a test within these time constraints.

Update on CITB Grants

CITB & CPCS have worked collectively to reconcile data exchanges to allow the payments of grants relating to the “Carding Without Application” (CWA) these grants are for the achievement of additional plant related VQ units where CITB pay £300 per achievement.

Any previous grants that were missing have been reconciled and will now be showing for employers via their Grant Online account or through a paper form which is sent to the employer if they have no online account. Employers will now have to authorise their grant payment: confirming the individual was employed at the date of the achievement and to agree to the Grants Scheme Terms & Conditions.

Employers can continue to manually apply for grant for additional plant VQ units “achieved” up to 30 September 2020 by completing the Grant Application Form available on the CITB website here: https://www.citb.co.uk/levy-grants-and-funding/grants-funding/qualification-grants/short-period-less-than-1yr-and-vq-grants/

Employers need to complete and submit this with evidence of the unit achievement (such as a copy of the certificate) by 31 January 2021 to grant.claimforms@citb.co.uk. Any late submissions will be rejected, but employers may be able to appeal depending on their individual circumstances.

Employers can also continue to manually apply for full VQ achievement grant following the same instructions. Any achieved between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021 should be applied for by 30 June 2021.

Email Accounts

Please can you ensure that you are using the CPCS Test centre email account with any CWA’s or general enquires you may have for your named contact rather than their personal email accounts. The email address is CPCS.testcentres@nocn.org.uk

For employers & individuals the email address has changed from Enquiries@jobcards.org to CPCS@Jobcards.org

Theory Test Question and Answer Bank – “Documents tab TCMS”

Just so you are aware we are about to updated the versions in the Theory Test Question and Answer Bank as there was some formatting issues.

The questions and answer content has not changed, the documents will have the 01-12-2019 version date. The modified date on the TCMS will change to 22/01/2021 when we will upload the documents into the TCMS.