A documented route must receive, track and decide complaints and appeals, with the decision made by someone not involved and a two-year bar after consultancy or employment.
What applies today
A written route must cover how complaints and appeals are received, assessed and decided, with a log of each case, its status and the action taken. The body first decides whether the case concerns certification work it owns, and if it does, it handles it. A formal complaint or appeal must be acknowledged. It must collect and check what it needs to decide. The outcome must be decided, or reviewed and approved, by people who had no part in the certification work concerned. To avoid a conflict, anyone who advised the client, or worked for it, cannot review or approve the outcome for that client within two years after the advice or job ended. The body must formally tell the complainant and the appellant how the case ended, and take any further action needed.
Why it matters
Complaints and appeals are the outside check on a certification decision. Independence is the clause's core: the person who made the original decision should not be the person who reviews the challenge. The two-year bar mirrors the impartiality rule and catches a common failure, where a former consultant joins the body and reviews a complaint about a former client. Acknowledgement and formal notice are simple duties that are often missed.
The public FDIS contents lists clause 7.13 as Complaints and appeals. The FDIS requirement wording is not held, so the requirement above is the 2012 text that applies until publication.
Where this clause lands in the revision
This is a process clause. The public record confirms the number and title, and the process as described today is what an assessment uses until publication. A first artefact an assessor commonly asks for here is documented complaint and appeal process with responsibilities. The party this touches first is The complaints handler and the independent person who reviews the outcome.
What the assessor asks for
| Category | Artefact to have ready |
|---|---|
| Procedure | Documented complaint and appeal process with responsibilities |
| Log | Complaints and appeals with dates, status and outcome |
| Acknowledgement | Sample acknowledgement to a formal complainant |
| Independence | Decision maker not involved, with the two-year check |
| Notice | A closing letter that states the result and confirms the route is closed |
One common question. read a complaint file and ask who decided it and what connection that person had with the client. A decision by the original evaluator is a finding.
Common failures
- The complaints inbox is the same as the sales inbox
- No acknowledgement is sent
- The person who handled the certification also signs the complaint response
- Former consultants are not screened against the two-year bar
Prepare before publication
Open every complaint from the last two years and check the independence of the decision maker. Record the two-year history for each.
Dates that matter
The public record gives stage 50.20 on 4 August 2026 and voting to 27 October 2026. The planning date, 15 February 2027, is an estimate from that stage and not an ISO date, and clause 7.13 has no separate date.
Cross-references
4.2 Management of impartiality · 4.6 Publicly available information · 7.11 Termination, reduction, suspension or withdrawal · 8.7 Corrective actions
Source
Source for 7.13: ISO/IEC 17065:2012, Clause 7.13, with the ISO/IEC FDIS 17065 public record. Our statement, not the instrument verbatim; the FDIS wording is not held.
Not legal advice; does not certify. A reading of the requirement and the evidence an assessor commonly samples, not a substitute for the standard or your accreditation body's rules.