Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) | New Programmes
About the UKAS SARCs programme
UKAS has established a project to develop accreditation for Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) to the requirements of ISO 15189:2022. The FDR Code and ILAC G19: 2022 following instruction from the Forensic Science Regulator state that these activities are required to achieve this Accreditation by 2 October 2025.
The international standard ISO 15189 specifies general requirements for competence and quality that are particular to medical laboratories. SARC services are essential to patient care and therefore have to be available to meet the needs of all patients and the clinical personnel responsible for the care of those patients. Such services include arrangements for examination requests, patient preparation, collection of samples, transport, storage, examination of patient and collection of clinical samples, together with subsequent interpretation, reporting and advice, in addition to the considerations of safety and ethics.
The FSR Code of Practice details the specific forensic requirements of these dedicated services providing high quality healthcare alongside forensic medical examination. The importance of correct collection of evidence, avoidance of contamination, and continually ensuring the best outcome for evidence protection, has considerable benefits for the health and well-being, and delivery of justice, for patients and the community.
Associated Standards
ISO 15189:2022 Medical laboratories — Requirements for quality and competence
ILAC G19: 2022 Modules in Forensic Science
Forensic Science Regulators Codes of Practice (Additional guidance can be found in FSR-GUI-0020 and FSR-GUI-0017).
Current status
The Forensic Science Regulator requires that Sexual Assault Referral Centres – SARCs are to be accredited to ISO 15189:2022 for the forensic examination process. The deadline for this accreditation to be in place is 2 October 2025. UKAS have been supporting the SARCs sector throughout the development pilot process and developed an assisted application process (the UAAS) to give guidance on the requirements including initial reviews of key documents. SARCS are now progressing to the preassessment and initial assessment phases.
The development process for this new Accreditation has now been concluded and whilst the UAAS will still be available to all applicants as required by their staff, the document review process that has been included will become part of the standard assessment process and will incur normal assessment costs for applications received after 1 April 2025.
In order to ensure that the initial assessments are able to cover the required scope, UKAS will require evidence of the completed full end to end validation of the examination process to be submitted for review and acceptance prior to an initial assessment being confirmed. Your Assessment Manager and/or the Development project team will be able to discuss this with you at the appropriate time.
The project team continue to support all SARCS through the process and remain available to discuss any questions or queries.
For further information on this project please contact Emily Robinson – [email protected]
