Which certificates will be accepted for SGARs stewardship?

The Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use (CRRU) has issued a list of rodenticide competence certificates which will be accepted as proof of competence when purchasing professionals use rodenticides under the forthcoming SGAR (second-generation anticoagulant rodenticide) Stewardship Regime.

The list comprises 14 ‘qualifications’. Five are for ‘grandfather’ certificates awarded from training which is no longer available, seven are certificates that are currently available and there is one new certificate, Rat Control for Gamekeepers, which, as the name implies, is designed for gamekeepers and is being accredited by BASIS.

In addition, the CRRU Wildlife Aware qualification has been given ‘approved update’ status. CRRU chairman Dr Alan Buckle explains the important distinction: “Wildlife Aware is not a stand-alone certificate, but serves as a custom-made update for those who need to top up a time-expired basic certificate to approved status, or feel like they want to update themselves because they have an existing approved certificate that was obtained some time ago.”

A full list of the approved certificates is shown in the table below or download the CRRU Approved Certtificates PDF here.

The announcement, well in advance of the deadline of 1 June 2016, which is when the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has said that proof of competence will be required, will be welcomed by pest professionals who have naturally been keen to know which certificates would be acceptable and whether new training and qualifications would be needed.

Readers may recall that CRRU has been empowered by HSE to develop and implement the SGAR Stewardship Regime with 100% of the funding coming from the industry. AS part of that process, training courses are being reviewed by the CRRU Training and Certification Work Group. To gain approval, they must cover 13 specific content elements and 11 training process attributes. More courses will be considered by the Work Group in future.

Under the Stewardship Regime, professional use rodenticide labels will state: ‘For supply to and use only by professional users holding certification demonstrating that they have been trained according to the UK second generation anticoagulant rodenticide (SGAR) stewardship programme requirements.’

Just to be clear, professional users means: public health pest professionals in both local authorities and the private sector, farmers, land managers and gamekeepers.