Our standards

Why Are Standards Important In First Aid?

When teaching people to perform potentially life saving actions, the course content and training and assessing of particular techniques are essential to get right, and must be standardised across the entire sector.

However, there are many ways to deliver the actual training, and delivering the content in an understandable and practical way is also crucial.

At the FATC, we pride ourselves in the way we uphold standards both on courses with clients and in the way we do business.  Exploring new initiatives, being environmentally responsible, and continually improving in the way we work are constants for us.

We are a co-operative business, that means that recognised co-operative standards are baked into our business structure by default and these inform the decisions we make and the way that we operate.  People and Planet come first, and any profit we make is put back into the business or shared with our team.

What Standards Do We Focus On?

Our Team:

Our team members are our greatest asset so we look after them.  

Although most of our trainers are self-employed and part of our co-operative business, we do have some employees and we are a Living Wage employer.

Regular CPD days are held for all staff and trainers and there’s an annual ‘Standardisation’ session at our 2-day AGM event each year. Alongside this, each trainer receives an annual review which checks trainers are using the correct material, teaching to the same lesson plan, using the same key phrases and that we are all delivering the same course, with the same key messages, techniques and even sometimes the same jokes!

Our trainers are recruited with a bias towards ‘industry competence’ meaning they teach with a background in the sector so they can talk-the-talk as well as teach the technique.

New trainers go through a structured Trainer Induction Programme which includes shadowing somewhere between 4 and 8 courses before attending a 4-day trainer induction course and being signed off to teach. When I started with FATC, there were 9 of us at the AGM, now there are over 30 so we’re obviously doing something right!

You can view our trainer biographies here.

Our Courses:

All of our courses are regularly reviewed and updated. This means your course will always follow the latest in health and safety regulations, UK and European Resuscitation Council Guidelines and industry best practices. 

All of our courses deliver the relevant required content and we also regularly add in more specific or bespoke sessions, scenarios and contexts to suit our clients’ needs. This has proved very relevant to lone working environmental consultants, equestrians, ecologists and forestry teams as well as larger teams in shopping centres, sports arenas and outdoor centres. We add in a free extra hour in order to cover this content.

Everyone on our courses receives a free First Aid Manual. We have developed 6 of these digital manuals and they can be stored on your phone or other device so they are always at hand and are not lying at the back of a shelf or in a drawer where no-one can find them in an emergency. Being digital they can be updated regularly as guidance changes and we embed video demonstrations of all the first aid techniques we teach on our courses.

You can view and buy our manuals for less than £5 here.

Our Environmental Impact:

We are working towards being a net zero business. Our biggest change in order to achieve this to date has been removing almost all paper from our operation. We do online registrations, attendance checks and assessments. We invested heavily in the development of a bespoke trainers’ app to make this possible.

Our carbon reduction targets are all based on Scope 3 emissions. The newly updated (April 2026) Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) guidance requires a minimum Scope 3 target of 33.3% reduction measured over a 10 year period, from our baseline year of 2023. For us, this means achieving that reduction by 2033, and a long-term Net Zero target by 2050. That may sound a long way off but all of our efforts add up as we aim to reduce the impact on our planet.

Our Team uniforms are from sustainable sources and we have maximised the recycling of any course materials and consumables, including face shields, flip charts, bandages and even our pull up banners.

You can get an up to date measure of our environmental impact, and download a copy of our Impact Report here: Environmental Impact – First Aid Training Co-operative

Our International Quality Standards:

These may seem a very dry topic but are essential checks for a modern client focussed and environmentally responsible business. The ISO certifications are internationally recognised and enable us to ensure continual improvement and benchmarking against a range of industry sectors, including our own! We run internal audits every year and also undergo an annual rigorous external audit for each of our ISO certifications.

ISO 9001 is an international standard that ensures that we meet customer needs, achieve good communication, have a quality policy and quality objectives that are well resourced.

ISO 45001 covers all of our health and safety management on our courses, making them safe for our clients and also when our Trainers are travelling for work.

ISO 14001 is our Environmental standard award of which we are very proud as noted above.

Our Mental Health Initiatives:

In 2022, we developed our suite of Mental Health First Adi courses in conjunction with Mental Health expert Brian Glass from Changes East Lothian, to support our clients across all sectors with their organisations’ approach to team wellbeing. The HSE recommends that mental health needs of the workforce are considered as part of a First Aid needs assessment. We’d go further than that though and say that the mental health needs of the workforce are essential part of any employer’s assessment.

We have developed a reputation for excellence in this field and have been invited to many conferences and workshops to deliver sessions on mental health, neurodiversity and wellbeing.

Explore our range of Mental Health First Aid courses

Our Client Feedback:

Consistent checking of the satisfaction rating and comments from our clients is what keeps us providing what you need and to an excellent standard. Our 2 minute feedback questionnaire after a course is our main source but we also encourage clients to provide feedback in other places, mainly Google Reviews, where we now have over five hundred 5 star reviews.

You can read some of the feedback here: First Aid Training Cooperative – Google Search (the google reviews link will appear on the right hand side of the screen)

We’re very proud of what we’ve become over the years since we started in 2015. Our systems, our teams and our quality standards is what keeps us refreshed and enthused about delivering the excellent courses you expect from us.

Standards are important and they all contribute to our strapline, perhaps the most important thing about us:

Quality Training Saves Lives

Get confident – get trained!

To get trained by the best, why not consider taking a first aid course with us? To find out which first aid course is best for you check out our full range of First Aid and Mental Health First Aid courses. You can view the full range for all sectors using the button below.