Checking a UK Lab's UKAS Schedule: Is the Test You Paid For Actually in Scope?

You check a UK laboratory's scope by finding it on the UKAS register, opening its schedule of accreditation, and looking for a row that matches the test on your report: the same kind of material, the same property measured, the same technique or method. If that row exists and the schedule is current, the result can carry accredited weight. If it does not, the laboratory may still be accredited, just not for the thing you paid for.

What accreditation is, and why it matters, is covered in the published article on what the UKAS mark proves. This page does not repeat it. It is the procedure: where to look, what the schedule contains, how to read it, and what the answer does and does not tell you.

Step one: find the laboratory on the register

UKAS runs a public directory of accredited organisations that can be searched by name, type, region or category ^[1]. Start from the accreditation number printed on the report or quoted by the laboratory, because names are not unique: a group can hold several accreditations under different entities, and a similarly named company may have none.

1. Take the accreditation number from the report, usually beside the UKAS symbol or in the footer.
2. Search the UKAS directory for that number and note the organisation it resolves to ^[1].
3. Compare that name and address, character by character, with the laboratory named on your report.
4. Open the schedule of accreditation attached to the listing. The listing alone is not the check.

One trap is worth naming. UKAS also runs CertCheck, a database for verifying accredited management-system certification such as a company's quality-management certificate ^[5]. A supplier holding a certified quality system has been checked for how it runs its business. That is not laboratory accreditation, and a CertCheck result tells you nothing about whether a test method is in scope.

Step two: read the schedule header

The schedule is the document that sets out the limits and conditions of an accreditation. Before the table of tests, the header tells you whose accreditation it is and where it applies. Read it for four things.

The site point catches people. A laboratory business with two premises can hold accreditation for work at one and not the other. A report issued under the company name from the second site is not covered by a schedule that lists only the first.

Step three: find your test in the table

UKAS testing schedules are laid out in three columns: the materials or products tested; the type of test, property measured and range of measurement; and the standard specifications, equipment or techniques used. Your test is in scope only if one row covers all three at once. Accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025 is granted for defined activities, so a schedule that lists the technique but not the material, or the material but not the property, does not stretch to fill the gap ^[6].

To do the match you need three facts from the report: what the sample was described as, what property was reported, and which method or technique produced it. If the report does not state the method, that is itself worth a question. The handbook's walk-through of a certificate of analysis shows where those fields normally sit; see the handbook's walk-through of a certificate of analysis.

A worked example

The rows below are illustrative. They are not taken from any real laboratory's schedule, and they are simplified to show the reasoning. Suppose a report from an accredited laboratory gives HPLC purity, LC-MS identity and an endotoxin result for a peptide sample, and the laboratory's schedule contains these entries.

• HPLC purity on a synthetic peptide: arguably covered only if the laboratory treats the peptide as a pharmaceutical raw material under that method. Ask the laboratory directly whether this sample was run under the accredited method or a variant of it.
• LC-MS identity: no row lists mass spectrometry. Out of scope, whatever symbol appears on the report.
• Endotoxin on a peptide: the only endotoxin row covers waters. A peptide is a different material with its own interference questions, so the result is out of scope.
• The elemental row is irrelevant unless metals were reported.

The report in this example comes from an accredited laboratory and may still carry only one accredited line, or none. That is the difference between an accredited laboratory and an accredited method, and it is the whole reason for reading the table rather than the listing. Read the technique column carefully too: an HPLC method is defined by its column, mobile phases, gradient and detection, and the handbook sets out those reversed-phase HPLC method parameters for readers who want to compare a report against a schedule entry.

Step four: confirm it is current

UKAS states that the presence of a schedule on its website confirms that the organisation's accreditation is current and valid, that absence of a schedule means the accreditation is no longer in force, and that a temporary suspension is noted ^[2]. Accreditation can be suspended, withdrawn or reduced in scope, either by UKAS or at the organisation's request ^[4].

Two practical consequences follow. A PDF schedule sent by the laboratory or saved from last year proves only what was true then; check the live register. And a reduction in scope can remove exactly the test you care about while leaving the laboratory listed, so a quick look at the listing is not enough.

What changes in the digital format

UKAS has announced that from August 2026 the schedule is integrated with the accreditation certificate and made available digitally and as a PDF on its website. It has standardised the terminology used across schedules and published glossaries mapping old terms to new ones; digital schedules sit under a single permanent URL with historic versions reachable through version-specific links, and the PDF version carries an embedded QR code ^[3].

For a buyer this helps in two ways. Standard wording makes it easier to match a report line to a schedule row across different laboratories. And a permanent URL with version history means you can record exactly which version you checked. During the changeover some laboratories will be on the new format and some on the old, so expect wording to differ between schedules you look at in the same week.

When the answer is out of scope

An out-of-scope result is not a failed result. It is a result that rests on the laboratory's own account of its competence rather than on an assessor's. The reasonable response is to ask the laboratory three questions and write the answers down.

1. Which lines on this report, if any, were produced under an accredited method?
2. If a line is marked as accredited, which schedule row does it fall under?
3. For lines outside scope, how was the method validated, and can you describe it?

A laboratory that knows its scope answers the first two immediately. Keep a note in the batch file of the accreditation number, the schedule version and date you checked, and the answer to each question. That record turns a two-minute check into evidence you can show someone else later.