An Account Representative is a named individual who is authorised to order, sell and surrender allowances for a participant through the Compliance Account.
Account Representatives also have access rights in the CRC Registry to carry out actions on behalf of the participant in the same way as a Primary and Secondary Contact.
Each participant organisation can have between one and three Account Representatives for the Compliance Account at any one time. Any further changes beyond three original Account Representative registrations would normally incur an administration fee of £70.
An Account Representative should be a person who is best placed to administer the order, sale and surrender of allowances for their participating organisation. They may be a member of staff of, or an agent of, the organisation that is the Compliance Account holder. They may be the same individuals as the Primary or Secondary Contacts.
If a Participant is based overseas the Compliance Account holder must be a member of the group who is primarily UK based, or if there is no UK based member, an agent organisation based in the UK appointed to act for the participant.
If a proposed Account Representative is based overseas they will need to contact the CRC Helpdesk.
All Account Representatives will need an approved Government Gateway Digital Certificate which can be acquired from Chamber SimplySign.
The Digital Certificate is downloaded onto your computer allowing you to securely access certain UK Government web-based services via the Government Gateway. In order to obtain a Digital Certificate, stringent identification checks are conducted on the individual applying for the certificate.
The application process can take up to 4-5 weeks - in some cases you may be required to send documents to Chamber SimplySign to verify your identity.
Yes, the Senior Officer, Primary Contact and Secondary Contact can also be an Account Representative.
No, if the CRC team have assessed and confirmed that you are fully exempt from the rest of the introductory phase due to holding a full CCA exemption then you do not need to appoint an Account Representative to your account. However, if you lose your CCA exemption please contact the CRC team for further guidance on how you need to proceed for the remaining years of the introductory phase.
If an individual registered as an Account Representative is leaving the participant organisation then they should be removed from the system by the Primary Contact, Secondary Contact or another Account Representative. If there are no other Account Representatives, new Account Representative (s) will need to be nominated by the Primary Contact or Secondary Contact. These nominated people will need to apply for a Digital Certificate themselves through Chamber SimplySign and go through the enrolment process.
Yes, the person should be removed from the role by the Primary Contact, Secondary Contact or another Account Representative. A new Account Representative will need to be nominated by the Primary Contact or Secondary Contact if there are no other Account Representatives for the account. This nominated person will need to apply for a Digital Certificate themselves through Chamber SimplySign and complete the enrolment process.
Anybody can be an Account Representative for a participant in the scheme as long as they:
- are authorised by the Senior Officer of the participant organisation; and
- have a Government Gateway Digital Certificate from Chamber SimplySign.
If a consultant wants to work for multiple clients and use the same digital certificate for all clients then they should register as an Agent on the registry. The Account Representative from the participant organisation will then be able to appoint the agent to act on their behalf. If the consultant needs to be the actual account representative for an account then they will need a separate digital certificate for each CRC account that they are working on.
Information for consultants who want to be able to undertake account representative tasks are provided on the below page:
A screenshot guidance document showing how consultants should register for an agent account which will allow them to act as an Account Representative are provided below:
Please bear in mind that the Account Representatives will be able to buy, sell and surrender allowances on behalf of the Compliance Account Holder/Primary Member and therefore have a very responsible role. You cannot delegate legal responsibility for complying with the requirements of CRC to an agent or other third party. Your organisation and the group of which it is a part (if applicable) remains responsible for compliance and will be liable for any penalties if the agent does not comply. Any individual or company can register as an agent for the CRC Scheme.
The administrator does not check the credentials or competency of the individual making the agent application. It is the responsibility of the organisation that employs the agent to act for them to check that they are fit to fulfil the agreed role.
In order for you be ready for the first fixed price sale of allowances in June 2012 at least one of your Account Representatives should enrol in the system by 31 May 2012. You are encouraged to nominate your account representatives and apply for a Digital Certificate as early as possible. We will start to send out the letters containing the information the account representatives need to enrol in mid-April (for those participant accounts which have nominated their account representatives). The later you nominate your account representative(s) the later they will receive their letters to allow them to enrol.
If an account representative is not enrolled for your account then your organisation will not be able to purchase and surrender allowances in the fixed price sale and could therefore be non compliant.
We therefore recommend that the nominated Account Representative(s) applies for their Digital Certificate(s) now and enrol as soon as we advise them to.
The process of getting into the CRC compliance account as an Account Representative will take time because there are several steps.
- Nominating an Account representative (PDF, 5MB) - This is quick process. Please see the screen shots for details of how to do this.
- Purchasing and downloading a digital certificate - You will need to purchase a Digital Certificate and it can take several days/weeks before your identity is verified and you are sent an email to download the certificate.
- Receiving the known facts letters - When we have completed due diligence checks we will send out the Known Facts Letters - a reference number to the account representative and a PIN to the senior officer which needs to be given to the account representative, to allow the account representative to enrol for the Compliance Account.
- Enrolling as an account representative - This will only take a few minutes once you have your certificate downloaded onto your computer and have your known facts letters.
Please note we will start to send out the known facts letters for Account Representatives from April 2012.
A guidance document is available demonstrating how to add an Account Representative to your account:
We are aware of some participants having difficulties logging into the CRC Registry.
