The redeveloped MCS scheme: what changes before your certification body calls

The redeveloped MCS installer scheme is live. The first installers are already certifying installations under it, and MCS says most businesses will move over during 2026, with the rollout running into 2027 and the whole transition closing on 31 March 2027, the date by which every MCS certified business has to be operating under the redeveloped scheme. You don't choose when. Your certification body contacts you when it's your turn, and from that point you're into application, scheme checks, and an assessment.

For an installer running 15 or more jobs a month, the sensible response is to treat the transition like a job you've already been booked for. Know what's changing, assign the roles the scheme now requires, and make sure the operational evidence it will ask about actually exists somewhere findable.

What's actually changing

The current scheme certifies your business largely on its quality management system: the folder of documented procedures your certification body audits. The redeveloped scheme replaces that with a risk-based assessment model built around what you deliver on site and how you treat customers.

The concrete changes for a certified business:

• Consumer Code membership is no longer a scheme requirement. Consumer protection obligations now sit in the MCS Customer Commitment, which your business signs up to directly. Since 18 June 2026, when DESNZ recognised the redeveloped scheme as a Code of Practice for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, BUS installations don't need a code either. Whether to cancel RECC or HIES depends on which scheme you're on.
• Complaints management is centralised with MCS rather than spread across codes and certification bodies.
• You'll hold an Installer Agreement directly with MCS, a contract between your business and the scheme, signed by a named person in your business, and you get a dedicated MCS account manager.
• The certificate creation window extends from 14 days to 30 days, which is breathing room for the post-install evidence chase, though a job that takes 30 days to certify is still a job you probably haven't closed out or fully invoiced.

Two things are staying put. The technical requirements in the MCS Installation Standards carry over unchanged. MCS has restructured them to be more focused, but what a compliant heat pump or solar installation looks like is the same. And the pre-sale obligations (performance estimates, information you must give a customer before contract) still exist, now split into their own technology-specific standards.

If your business already delivers clean installs and handles customers properly, the redeveloped scheme is designed to be less admin, not more. The catch is that "less paperwork" means the assessment leans harder on your delivery record, which is covered below.

If your job records are currently spread across engineers' phones, spreadsheets and inboxes, that's the gap to close before your transition starts. Book a demo and we'll show you how installers keep site evidence, test results and certificates against each job in Payaca.

The three roles you have to assign

The Installer Operating Requirements, the new core scheme document, defines three roles every certified business must fill.

Licensee. The person who signs the Installer Agreement with MCS and accepts ultimate responsibility for meeting scheme requirements. They need genuine authority in the business, which for most 10 to 50 person businesses means the MD or a director. You confirm your Licensee with MCS during scheme checks.

Main Contact. The day-to-day point of contact between your business, your certification body and MCS, responsible for scheme-related queries. Must be an employee, and effectively replaces the Nominee role from the current standards. If your Main Contact changes, you have to tell MCS and your certification body, because it's held against your record in the MCS Installations Database (MID).

Technical Supervisor. Replaces the Nominated Technical Person, and is tied to individual installations: their full name is mandatory on every certificate you create in the MID, and they must hold an in-date approved qualification for the technology they sign off. Who can hold it, what happens when a qualification lapses and when you need more than one are covered in our guide to the MCS Technical Supervisor.

What the transition looks like

MCS has published the milestones:

1. Application. Your certification body contacts you, you provide the required information, and they review it and notify MCS.
2. Scheme checks. MCS runs checks on your business, starting with a 15-minute onboarding call where you're asked to show you understand the Customer Commitment and the Installer Operating Requirements, and how they're embedded in your operations. Your MCS account manager is assigned at this point.
3. Assessment. Once scheme checks pass, your certification body carries out its transition assessment.
4. Certificate of Conformity. Issued by your certification body after a successful assessment. This confirms you've been assessed against the applicable standards for your technologies, but it does not yet let you operate under the new scheme.
5. Installer Agreement. The final step. Your Licensee and MCS both sign, and only then are you operating as an MCS certified installer under the redeveloped scheme.

None of these steps is difficult for a well-run business. The point of preparing is that they all arrive at once, on someone else's schedule, alongside your normal install volume.

"Embedded in your operations" is the phrase to take seriously

The old scheme let you pass an audit with a good QMS binder even if the binder bore little resemblance to how jobs actually ran. A risk-based model works the other way round. What you're demonstrating, on the onboarding call and in the assessment, is how customer protection and quality control actually operate day to day: where site evidence lives, whether every job has its test results and photos attached, how complaints get logged and resolved, and who supervised what.

That's an operations question, and for a business at 15-50 installs a month it's really a systems question. If an assessor asks which Technical Supervisor signed off a specific March installation and what evidence supports it, the answer needs to come out of your job records in minutes. Businesses running everything through one platform (job record, on-site capture forms, photos, test results, generated certificates) are already holding the answer. Businesses reconstructing jobs from WhatsApp threads are not.

Before the call comes

A short list worth an hour of a Monday morning:

• Decide who your Licensee, Main Contact and Technical Supervisors will be, and write it down.
• Check every Technical Supervisor's qualification is in date and on the MCS approved list for the technologies they'll sign off.
• If a Technical Supervisor is sub-contracted, get the contract in place now.
• Read the Installer Operating Requirements and the Customer Commitment. The onboarding call assumes you have.
• Audit where your installation evidence lives. Pick one recent job and try to assemble its full compliance record in ten minutes. If you can't, fix the system, not the job.

If you want a structured read on where your business stands against all of that, our MCS readiness checker walks the redeveloped scheme's requirements (the three roles, consumer contact, financial protection and record-keeping) and returns a readiness score with the gaps named.

The rollout timetable isn't yours to control, but the state of your operation when the call comes is. Book a demo and we'll walk through how your jobs, evidence and certificates would sit in Payaca before your transition starts.