Hi DH

This is a variant of one of those questions which I suspect will become ever more difficult to answer as the drive for less "red/blue tape" moves forward and when it has become relatively easy to set up as e.g. an Awarding Organisation.

There was a time when I could confidently recommend that anyone who was to operate a fork lift truck should undergo training by someone approved by RTITB or similar body. The HSE guidance was very clear and it would be difficult for the employer to argue that they had done all that was legally required (in the UK what was "reasonably practicable") if they didn't follow the guidance.

Similarly even now the guidance is fairly rigid. If you want to set up as doing building asbestos surveys you need specific bits of paper not some homemade training.

Conversely some might tell you that PASMA training is needed for anyone who erects (or even uses!) a lightweight aluminium tower scaffold but that is a message mostly from those wanting to sell you PASMA training and might be OTT for some users - particularly where the towers are going to be quite small and where the instruction manual is in effect stuck on the components or a very thin manual whose content is relatively easy to assimilate and communicate.

For most other things it is horses for courses with those who may have some authority when it comes to guidance often having a commercial interest in who does what!

So, on this one, I would think first about the vulnerability of those at risk and the volume of those at risk. Whole load of difference between a kitchen in a residential home with vulnerable "clients" and the facilities running many hours a day to the standard of training/competence that might be needed for small scale operations which don't involve higher risk foods or processes.

Then I would go to see what the likes of CIEH recommend but with the recognition of the need to balance any commercial interest with what the law actually expects.