BASIS helps contractors support the VI

BASIS helps Contractors Support the VI - and it needn't cost a penny!

By Editor

BASIS is a Professional Register of Practitioners Providing Professional Pesticide and Plant Nutritional Advice. its aims and objectives is to provide a means of recognising, through the maintenance of a register, suitably qualified persons as professionals in Pest and Vegetation Management, Plant Nutrition and related activities that would be recognised both within the Industry and by the general public:

• by maintaining competence through suitable training, e.g. BASIS, FACTS, Continuing Professional Development (CPD);

• by ensuring professional conduct of members through recognised training and monitoring, including the Code of Ethics and disciplinary systems.

• For clarity, the activities of the Register will embrace all pesticides as identified in the Food & Environment Protection Act 1985 and the Control of Pesticides (Amendment) Regulations 1997, and fertilisers in accordance with Section A-E, Schedule 1 of the Fertiliser Regulations 1991, and any other nutrient sources applied to enhance crop growth and quality.

The Register is open to all qualified individuals who either provide advice on pesticide and fertiliser use or provide a support service to such use. Those providing advice to end users (practitioners) are entitled to be full members of the Register. Those providing support services will normally be entitled to become Associates.

BASIS has recently reached agreement with NPTC to allow Contractors who are members of the BASIS Professional Register to join the National Register of Sprayer Operators (NRoSO) without the need to pay the NRoSO subscription or collect points separately for the NRoSO register.

Provided they fulfil the criteria each year for BASIS Professional Register membership, NRoSO will credit them as having achieved the requirements for the NRoSO register. They will still be able to demonstrate NRoSO membership, their commitment to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and the Voluntary Initiative (VI).

NRoSO will also be able to count their membership towards the VI target of 15,000 members by March this year.

BASIS has now included an 'Application Practice' category in the BASIS Professional Register to enable courses and events in this area to be pointed more accurately. Changes to the allocation of points for 'amenity' to be announced shortly will enable more amenity advisers to fulfill their obligations to the Professional Register and make demonstrable life-long learning a reality.

'This has removed a degree of duplication which Professional Register members felt was unnecessary', said BASIS Managing Director Rob Simpson. 'It will help to keep it simple for contractors who are BASIS Professional Register members, but who also operate a sprayer. The amenity industry will soon need to demonstrate what they are doing towards the various VI targets and this is a positive step which needn't cost any money', he added.

BASIS is committed to helping the amenity industry raise standards; with the continuing success of the BACCS scheme for contractors in the amenity sector and initiatives such as this the industry can demonstrate it is taking its obligations seriously. The government and the general public can be assured that contractors who have BASIS qualified personnel (on the Professional Register and keeping up to date via CPD), and who have joined the BACCS scheme to demonstrate a commitment to raising standards in application of pesticides, are taking a responsible attitude to the environment, to the public at large and to the governments desire for safe judicious use of pesticides.

Details about the BASIS Professional Register and BACCS can be obtained from the BASIS office; Telephone 01335 343945 or by e-mail to michele@basis-reg.co.uk