THE Post Office has been awarded a new ISO accreditation for its Integrated Mailing Solutions (IMS) service after an assessment covering the last seven months.

To achieve the ISO 9001:2008 certification, IMS had to demonstrate to the accrediting body LRQA (Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance) that it can meet the regulatory requirements and apply the system effectively to be of real benefit to its customers.

The accreditation follows the success of the ISO 27001:2005 data security standard IMS was awarded for all of its services in 2009, including mail opening, document management and scanning, data capture, bespoke printing, fulfillment, franking and the supply of stationery.

IMS have also recently successfully passed a six-monthly surveillance audit carried out by LRQA for ISO 27001:2005. The audit ensures the continuing compliance to the standards required by the International Standards Organisation and was carried out with no major or minor non-conformities.

IMS is now subject to six monthly reviews and regular surveillance audits. It must also perform internal audits between these official assessments.

On recommending IMS for the accreditation, Tony Smith, management systems lead assessor, LRQA said, "Evidence of the effective implementation of the quality management system (QMS) was provided. It was shown that QMS requirements have been successfully added to the existing information security management system.

“There is a strong top-down "right first time" culture which has been in place for many years and helps to maintain very low processing error rates with related good customer satisfaction."

Tony Randle, general manager IMS, added, "We are delighted to have achieved this further accreditation which provides peace of mind to our customers and of course potential customers that IMS not only takes data security seriously, but realises the importance of having robust quality management systems in place."