What Documents Are Needed for CHAS? A Complete Evidence Checklist

CHAS is not a single fixed checklist. It operates through three packages - Standard, Advanced and Elite - and the evidence expected grows at each level. Confirming which package a customer, tender or supply chain actually requires is the essential first step, since preparing Elite-level evidence for a Standard application wastes time, and preparing only Standard-level evidence for an Elite requirement leads to an incomplete submission.

CHAS Standard focuses on core health and safety management: a signed and dated health and safety policy (required once a business has five or more employees, though many smaller businesses provide one regardless), risk assessments covering the significant hazards in the business’s actual work, method statements for higher-risk activities, training and competence records for key staff, current insurance certificates, and a documented process for reporting and investigating accidents and incidents, including RIDDOR where relevant.

CHAS Advanced meets the former PAS 91 standard and adds around eight further modules on top of Standard, commonly including modern slavery, financial standing, environmental management and other supply-chain governance areas, alongside more detailed competence and training evidence.

CHAS Elite is built around the Common Assessment Standard, the UK construction industry’s standardised prequalification framework covering 13 risk management areas, and includes a Social Value Assessment. Since Procurement Policy Note PPN 03/24, UK public sector bodies are expected to assess contractors against the Common Assessment Standard, which in practice means CHAS Elite is increasingly the level required for public sector work.

Across every level, the single most common reason evidence is queried is a mismatch between what is written down and what the assessor can see is actually happening. A risk assessment that has clearly been copied from a generic template, an insurance certificate with a lapsed renewal date, or a training record with no supporting certificate attached are all treated as gaps, even where the underlying practice may be sound.

Evidence should also be current. Assessors are trained to check review dates on policies, expiry dates on insurance and certificates, and whether training records are for the people currently doing the work rather than staff who have since left. A document library that was correct eighteen months ago but has not been reviewed since is one of the most frequent, and most avoidable, reasons an application stalls.