A Cornwall installer, posting on ElectriciansForums as BXB, described what MCS certification cost a small firm:
"fork out for a QMS as there are well over a hundred documents to maintain"
That was July 2021, and it described the scheme MCS is now replacing. The same post put the objection more bluntly:
"On smaller installations, I get the feeling a similar amount of time will be spent in the office complying with MCS guff than will be spent on site."
The scheme he was describing is going. In MCS's words: "Throughout 2026 and into 2027, the MCS redeveloped installer Scheme will be rolling out." It brings three mandatory business roles. One of them will appear on every certificate you issue.
Three roles, one of which reaches the roof
MCS's guide names three mandatory roles: the Licensee, the Main Contact and the Technical Supervisor.
For the Licensee and the Main Contact, MCS's own guide is the definition of record. It is short, it is free, and it is worth reading before you assign either. Those definitions are not something to take second-hand from a blog, this one included.
The Technical Supervisor is different, and it is where the practical change sits.
The Technical Supervisor replaces the Nominated Technical Person
If you are MCS certified today, you have a Nominated Technical Person: one named individual, attached to the business.
The Technical Supervisor, per MCS, "replaces the current Nominated Technical Person". The difference is not the job title. The role "is instead linked to individual installations".
That is the sentence to read twice. Technical sign-off is no longer one person bolted to your company record. It attaches to jobs.
Which is why it lands in the MID:
"When creating an MCS certificate for an installation through the MID, you will need to enter the full name of the Technical Supervisor. This is a mandatory step."
Every certificate. Full name. Mandatory field.
MCS also confirms that a Technical Supervisor "can be directly employed by the installer or sub-contracted." For a firm of four leaning on one qualified person — or buying in competence for a technology outside its usual work — that is real flexibility.
Read the next section before you use it.
Risk-based surveillance, and the trap inside it
The redeveloped scheme also brings a new MCS Quality Risk Model. NICEIC's guidance sets it out: four business scenarios, labelled A to D, feeding three surveillance tiers.
In NICEIC's words:
- "Reduced assessment frequency – an assessment every three years"
- "Standard assessment frequency – annual assessment"
- "Enhanced assessment frequency – annual assessment… and a minimum of five sites per technology."
The distance between the top and bottom tier is one assessment every three years, against one every year plus a minimum of five site inspections per technology. On a small firm's calendar, and on its invoice, that is not a rounding error.
Now the part most installers have not registered. NICEIC:
"Changes, such as to the Technical Supervisor or legal entity, will move you back to standard."
Read that against the section above. The Technical Supervisor is linked to individual installations, and may be sub-contracted. And changing your Technical Supervisor moves you back to standard surveillance — from an assessment every three years to one every year.
Those two facts sit awkwardly together, and the published guidance we have seen does not resolve them. Naming a different Technical Supervisor on an individual MID certificate is, on its face, a different act from changing the Technical Supervisor registered against your business. Nothing in the material cited below spells out which one counts as a "change" for surveillance purposes.
If you are on reduced surveillance, or expect to be, get that answer from your certification body in writing before you sub-contract a Technical Supervisor. The flexibility MCS has granted and the penalty NICEIC has described may well be pointing at different things. Assume nothing that costs you two assessments.
What else moves when you transition
One concrete win, per the IAA: "Once you have transitioned, Consumer Code membership becomes voluntary." That is a live decision, not an automatic saving — but it is yours to make.
Structurally, MCS has rebuilt the scheme from four document families: Installer Operating Requirements, Customer Commitment, MCS Installation Standards, and Pre-sale Information & System Performance Estimate Standards.
Note what that reshuffle does not touch: how you install a system. The solar PV installation standard is MIS 3002, and MCS says the technical requirements "aren't changing… but they have been restructured and streamlined to be more focussed as 'technical truths'". If you were bracing to relearn the job, you are not being asked to. The reform is aimed at the paperwork BXB was complaining about — which is the only reason a five-year-old forum post is worth quoting.
Nobody has published your transition date
The rollout is phased. The IAA: "The transition is being rolled out in phases throughout 2026 and into 2027. It affects every MCS certified installer in the UK - and preparation needs to start now."
Every installer. On a secondary source's reading of MCS's own figures, there were 5,636 MCS-certified contractors in the UK in Q4 2025. It is a small industry, and all of it is in scope.
What does not appear in any of the material cited below is a single, scheme-wide transition deadline. You will see dates quoted in forums, in trade press, and in vendor marketing. Do not plan around a date you have not had from your own certification body. Ask them for yours.
Likewise, MCS has not published — in anything cited here — a qualification deadline for Technical Supervisors. If someone tells you there is one, ask them where it is written.
What to do now
- Email your certification body. Ask two things: your transition date, and whether naming a different Technical Supervisor per installation is the kind of change that resets your surveillance tier. Get both in writing.
- Decide who holds Technical Supervisor for each technology you certify, and whether that person is employed or sub-contracted.
- Work out which tier you expect to land in. If enhanced is plausible, price what "a minimum of five sites per technology" does to your year.
- Add a Technical Supervisor field wherever you track jobs. You will be typing a full name into the MID on every certificate. You want it captured at handover, not reconstructed six weeks later from memory and a WhatsApp thread.
- Once you have transitioned, decide whether you still want Consumer Code membership, now that it is voluntary.
- Read MCS's own guide before you assign the Licensee and Main Contact roles.
None of this needs a QMS with a hundred documents in it. It needs one email, sent early enough that the answer still changes what you do.