NOCN, the private firm that has taken over the management of Construction Plant Competence Scheme (CPCS) and Construction Industry Scaffolders Record Scheme (CISRS) cards, has apologised after a two-month backlog in applications.
NOCN said there had been “a number of data/administrative/technical issues” after it assumed responsibility for issuing the cards from the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) in December last year.
The problems meant that there was a delay processing applications made in November and December 2019, which the company blamed on the “in-flight transfer of such large and complicated schemes”.
In a statement, NOCN said: “We are very sorry for the impact of this on customers’ ability to work and the frustration that this is causing. We are working very hard, together with our service providers to rectify this problem as quickly as possible. CITB are being especially proactive and providing substantial support.
“Please be reassured that an emergency plan has been put in place and a taskforce deployed to get on top of the backlog as soon as possible.”
It said the problem only affected those people whose data does not match across the three companies involved in issuing the cards – CITB, their supplier of health and safety tests and NOCN itself. Those applications are therefore being processed manually.
It added that for CPCS, new applications made from January 2020 which can be processed automatically, are currently being processed within the standard 15-working-day timeframe. For CISRS, it is a manual process so timescales are currently longer. “We are printing hundreds of cards per day and are actively catching up already,” NOCN added.
