January 2024
When an LCA member is due for a Company Audit by an LCA Assessor, LCA Admin will contact their designated LCA contact, three months in advance of the audit. LCA Admin will request the current version of the member’s Statement of Compliance and Internal Audit. A requirement of being an LCA member is to have in place a management system compliant with the LCA Code of Conduct and that includes maintaining these documents. Most of our members simply send the required documents to us by return; a small minority are falling short of the expected standard, with significant consequences for them.
We request these two key documents in advance of the LCA audit and expect to receive them within a few days of our request. We are not asking for them to be written – we are asking for them to be attached to an email and sent. An up-to-date Statement of Compliance in line with the current LCA Standards and a current Internal Audit document should already exist.
Internal auditing is required at least once per year and as such we expect to receive a member’s Internal Audit record dated at some point in the previous 12 months. We expect both documents to be correct to the current Code of Conduct.
Some members on recent audits have not remained compliant with the requirements of the Code of Conduct and have started their audits with immediate non-conformances. Several of these members have now been suspended and may lose their LCA membership because they cannot show that they work within the requirements of the LCA Code of Conduct.
To be clear on the LCA expectations of our members:
- Members must work to the current Code of Conduct and Standards for Service Delivery
- We will not delay our audits if these key documents cannot be sent to us in a timely fashion
- If no Statement of Compliance or Internal Audit report are available at our audit there is a high likelihood membership will be suspended due to significant non-conformances.
Thank you to the majority of members who send us through their documentation on time each year.