How to Get Assessed

The Community Inclusion Standard is an open source standard founded and
owned by the Nature Finance Certification Alliance (NFCA). It has been developed by a FIRNS funded partnership including Deciding Matters, Scottish Land Commission and Soil Association Certification (SA Cert).

SA Cert is a leading certification, validation and verification body in the organic, forestry and carbon sectors.

The CIS is aligned with and informed the development of BSI Flex 705 V1.0 Nature Markets Community Engagement and Benefits which outlines best practice for engagement and potential benefits for local communities.

The standard is designed to be flexible and can operate alongside existing nature-based solution standards or as a standalone, within a defined boundary. It can be applied to projects throughout, but limited to, the United Kingdom.

In the longer-term recognised carbon programs may incorporate the CIS in combination with the validation or verification statement for carbon programs, once passing applicable governance processes for its incorporation.

Assessment and compliance to the CIS allows projects to demonstrate achievement of either tier 1 (basic) or tier 2 (enhanced) levels of community engagement and benefit provision.

To achieve certification at the enhanced level, for small projects (<10ha) there must be evidence of meeting at least two of the criteria from 2.1 and one criteria from 2.2 of the CIS. Larger projects (10ha and above) will need to meet all the enhanced criteria.

Our CIS Certification Criteria page provides more detail.

To apply, please contact SA Cert at naturemarkets@soilassociation.org – once contractual documents and fees are finalised, please forward the Project Design Document (PDD) and map along with the associated evidencing supporting documents.

Alternatively, if the project is making use of the Kana platform, after contracts are signed upload documents and evidence to the Kana platform.

In either case, please note that only members of the NFCA can apply, and once assessed, to qualify for use of our certification mark, your project must be a published case study on our website.

As an impartial certification body, confirmation that the CIS has been achieved requires the assessment of objective evidence.

For some standards clauses, the PPD includes a guidance section indicating the types of evidencing document to be provided (in column D). These guidelines are not intended to be exhaustive – if a document type not listed is provided, please indicate the type of document it is in the description.

CIS assessments are ‘desktop’ reviews and do not require a site visit. Once all key and supporting documents are received,

In summary, the key points in the application process are:

• Contact SA Cert requesting certification to the CIS, stating the size and nature of the project and the level you want to be assessed to. naturemarkets@soilassociation.org
• Receive a quote.
• Sign the SA Cert Master Services Agreement and Order Form (the contractual documents).
• Submit the PDD and provide the project map.
• Indicate in the PDD what evidence will be used to demonstrate compliance and either forward to SA Cert or upload copies of the evidencing documents.
• Respond promptly to SA Cert requests to provide any further clarifications or information.
• Once the project has been assessed it will be passed to an impartial reviewer to confirm the certification decision.
• Once the review is complete, the assessment report is forwarded by SA Cert to NFCA with a recommendation of certification. If NFCA agree, then the certification mark will be made available to the client to use on their website and other marketing materials. Please note while the standard is open source by way of creative commons, the certification mark remains the proprietary trademark of NFCA.
• Payment of the fee must be received before the certification is issued. Please note that fees are not refundable in the instance of the CIS not being achieved.

The CIS may be applied for at any time in a project’s life span. Once the certification body has completed the assessment which is independently reviewed, a report is submitted to NFCA with a recommendation for issuance of the applicable tier.

NFCA make the final decision based on the report whether to permit the project to use the CIS logo on website and marketing materials etc and to claim compliance with the CIS in literature. Note that currently there is one logo for both tiers. See our certification mark page for more information.

It is advisable to have a look at the guidance in the PDD before applying to ensure appropriate evidence can be provided. The certification mark is issued as a ‘point of truth’ and is time bound as a snapshot of a project up to the point of issuance. There is no assertion of on-going or future compliance with the standard. It is, however, possible to repeat the exercise if projects wish for a renewed issuance and it is also possible to be reassessed for the enhanced tier, after the initial issuance at the basic level.