Is BILD Act Certified Training Mandatory?

Whether BILD Act training is mandatory depends on your setting. NHS mental health units must use RRN-certified training under the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018. NHS-commissioned services have faced a contractual requirement since April 2020. For CQC-regulated providers, CQC has expected certified training since April 2021 and treats its absence as a probable Regulation 18 breach.

The Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018: a statutory requirement

The Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018 is the clearest legal mandate in this landscape. Under Section 5 of the Act, every mental health unit in England must ensure that staff who may use force receive appropriate training. The 2021 statutory guidance for the Act goes further, stating explicitly that training providers must be certified as complying with the RRN Training Standards.

The guidance defines mental health units broadly. They include acute adult wards, psychiatric intensive care units, forensic and secure wards, child and adolescent mental health wards, wards for people with autism or a learning disability, eating disorder units, and mother and baby units. If your service falls within one of these categories, RRN-certified training is not a recommendation: it is a legal requirement.

The Act requires NHS trusts and commissioned services to ensure that any training provider they commission holds certification from a UKAS-accredited body confirming compliance with the RRN Training Standards. That body is BILD Association of Certified Training (BILD Act). This means that for inpatient mental health settings, the question is settled: non-certified training is non-compliant with statute.

ProActive Approaches has held BILD Act (RRN) certification and has more than 30 years of experience delivering training in exactly these environments. Our programmes are built on a foundation of restraint reduction, ensuring your organisation meets both the spirit and the letter of the 2018 Act.

The NHS Standard Contract: a contractual obligation for commissioned services

Beyond NHS mental health units, the NHS Standard Contract extends the requirement to a wider range of commissioned services. Certified training that complies with the RRN Training Standards became a requirement of NHS commissioned services for people with learning disabilities, autism or mental health conditions in April 2020.

Section 41 of the NHS Standard Contract 2021/22 Technical Guidance sets out that commissioners must include Service Development and Improvement Plans (SDIPs) to ensure providers roll out certified training in restrictive practices to all relevant staff. The statutory guidance for the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018 further requires commissioners to satisfy themselves that training providers hold appropriate certification.

This contractual route is significant because it captures many independent providers and third-sector organisations that do not sit directly within NHS structures but receive NHS funding. If your organisation holds an NHS contract for mental health, learning disability, or autism services, the NHS Standard Contract makes certified training a condition of that contract, not merely a recommendation.

The practical consequence is straightforward: failing to comply puts your NHS contract at risk. Commissioners have the mechanism to require improvement plans and, ultimately, to take contract action. View our upcoming certified training courses to ensure your team stays compliant with NHS Standard Contract requirements.

CQC Regulation 13 and Regulation 18: the regulatory expectation

For the broader population of CQC-regulated providers, including residential care homes, supported living services, and community services, the position is more nuanced but still carries significant weight.

In July 2019, a joint letter from the CQC, NHS England, Health Education England, Skills for Care, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), and the Local Government Association announced the RRN Training Standards and stated that CQC would expect services to move to certified training. A joint letter from the CQC, Skills for Care, and Health Education England in November 2020 confirmed that from April 2021, CQC would expect all services across health and social care to use only training certified as complying with the RRN Training Standards.

The Restraint Reduction Network and BILD Act's own guidance states clearly: failure to use certified training is likely to be treated as a breach of CQC Regulation 18, which covers staffing and requires that staff receive appropriate training and support. CQC inspectors have also invoked Regulation 13, which covers safeguarding service users from abuse, in cases where inadequate or inappropriate restraint training has contributed to harm.

This distinction matters: the CQC's expectation is not a statutory duty in the same way as the Use of Force Act. However, in regulatory terms, the difference is largely academic. If a CQC inspector finds that your service uses non-certified training for restrictive interventions, they have the tools to treat this as evidence of non-compliance with Regulation 18, which can result in a rating of Requires Improvement or Inadequate.

What does the CQC position mean in practice?

CQC inspection reports increasingly reference the certification status of restraint training. The BILD Act's own guidance states that inspectors may treat the absence of certified training as a breach of Regulation 18 in circumstances where an incident or concern about restrictive practices has arisen. Commissioners and local authority contracts are following suit, requiring evidence of certification as part of the tendering process.

How Regulation 13 connects to safeguarding

CQC Regulation 13 requires registered persons to protect service users from abuse and improper treatment, including restraint that is inappropriate or disproportionate. Where a provider cannot demonstrate that staff have received training from a certified provider, inspectors are more likely to view any restraint incident as a potential safeguarding failure. The absence of certified training becomes a structural vulnerability in any serious incident review.

Children's homes and Ofsted: Regulation 20 and what it means

Children's homes regulated by Ofsted operate under The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015. Regulation 20 sets out the only circumstances in which restraint may be used: to prevent injury to any person, to prevent serious damage to property, or to prevent a child in a secure children's home from absconding. Any restraint must be necessary and proportionate.

The regulations do not specify a certification scheme by name. However, the statutory guidance accompanying the regulations requires the registered person to ensure that all staff have been adequately trained in the principles of restraint and any techniques appropriate to the needs of the children in their home. Commissioners of training for children's homes staff are told to satisfy themselves that any restraint techniques advocated have been medically assessed for safety with children.

The Local Government Association's guidance for commissioners (updated April 2024) confirms that the CQC's requirement for certified training applies in CQC-inspected settings that provide services for children. Where a setting is regulated solely by Ofsted and the DfE, the formal CQC expectation does not apply directly. However, the guidance explicitly states that social care commissioners should require certified training through contracts.

In practice, many children's homes are dual-regulated or work with local authorities that have adopted commissioning standards aligned with the RRN Training Standards. For children's homes and residential providers, choosing BILD Act certified training is the safest route to demonstrating compliance with CQC expectations and commissioner requirements. While Ofsted-only regulated settings are not currently required to use certified training, many children's homes are adopting it voluntarily as a mark of quality and due diligence.

How to ensure your organisation is compliant

The compliance picture varies by setting, but the practical steps are consistent across all providers. Here is what your organisation should do:

1. Identify your regulatory framework. Determine whether you fall under the Use of Force Act 2018 (NHS mental health units), the NHS Standard Contract (commissioned services), CQC regulation, Ofsted regulation, or a combination.
2. Audit your current training provider. Check whether your provider holds BILD Act certification on the BILD Act certified organisations register. Certification applies to the provider, curriculum and individual trainer, so verify all three elements are current.
3. Review your contracts and commissioner requirements. Even where statute does not compel certification, your existing contracts with commissioners may already require it. A contract review will clarify your exposure.
4. Train all relevant staff. Certification is only meaningful when staff have actually completed the certified curriculum. Maintain training records that evidence both the provider's certification status and each staff member's completion.
5. Embed a restraint reduction philosophy. Certified training is not an end in itself. Regulators look for evidence that your organisation is actively working to reduce reliance on restrictive practices. De-escalation training and physical intervention programmes should work together within a broader restraint reduction strategy.

ProActive Approaches has delivered BILD Act (RRN) certified training for more than 30 years. Our training is certified against the Restraint Reduction Network Training Standards. Manchester Metropolitan University evaluated the RRN Training Standards as a national framework, not our programme directly. Services that have implemented our programmes have documented reductions in incidents of up to 80%, providing the kind of measurable outcome that satisfies both regulators and commissioners. Our team can work with your organisation to assess your current position and build a training plan that removes compliance uncertainty.

The commercial reality: commissioners are making the decision for you

Even where the legal position leaves room for debate, the commissioning landscape is increasingly decisive. Local authorities, NHS commissioners, and integrated care boards are embedding RRN certification requirements into procurement frameworks and contract conditions. A provider without BILD Act certification is losing tenders to those that hold it, regardless of the technical legal distinction between a statutory duty and a contractual requirement.

The LGA's April 2024 guidance to social care commissioners states that they should satisfy themselves during the tendering process that commissioned providers use only certified training where training includes restrictive practices. This guidance is directed at commissioners, not providers, but its effect is direct: if your commissioner follows it, non-certified training becomes a disqualifying condition at the point of contract.

The direction of travel is clear. NHS mental health and commissioned services reached mandatory certification in 2020. CQC-regulated services reached a firm expectation in 2021. Commissioner-driven requirements are extending that expectation into Ofsted-regulated settings. For any provider that uses restrictive practices, the risk of remaining outside the certification framework grows with each contracting cycle.

Frequently asked questions

Is BILD Act certification legally required?

BILD Act certification is a statutory legal requirement only for training providers delivering restrictive practice training in NHS mental health units, as set out in the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018 statutory guidance. For NHS-commissioned services covering learning disabilities, autism and mental health, it became a contractual requirement in April 2020. For other CQC-regulated providers, it is not a statutory mandate but has been a firm CQC expectation since April 2021, and non-certified training is likely to be treated as a breach of Regulation 18.

What does the CQC say about BILD Act training?

The CQC confirmed in a joint letter in November 2020 that from April 2021 it would expect all services across health and social care to use only training in restrictive practices that is certified as complying with the Restraint Reduction Network Training Standards. BILD Act certifies training providers against those standards. The CQC's published guidance from BILD Act states that inspectors may treat the absence of certified training as a breach of Regulation 18 in relevant circumstances, which can affect inspection ratings and trigger enforcement action.

Do all care homes need BILD Act certified training?

Not all care homes are legally compelled by statute. The strict legal requirement applies to NHS mental health units under the Use of Force Act 2018. However, if a care home holds an NHS contract for relevant services, the NHS Standard Contract requires certified training. For CQC-regulated care homes without NHS contracts, CQC expects certified training and may cite its absence as a Regulation 18 breach. Given commissioning trends, in practice most providers offering any form of restraint training should use a BILD Act certified provider.

What is the difference between BILD Act and RRN compliance?

The Restraint Reduction Network (RRN) owns the Training Standards that define what good restrictive practice training looks like. BILD Act (BILD Association of Certified Training) is the UKAS-accredited certification body that the RRN licenses to certify training providers as meeting those standards. A provider that is BILD Act certified has been assessed as meeting the RRN Training Standards. The terms are often used interchangeably, but formally: RRN sets the standard, and BILD Act certifies compliance with it. ProActive Approaches holds BILD Act (RRN) certified status.

What happens if a care home uses non-certified training?

The consequences depend on setting. NHS mental health units using non-certified training are in breach of the Use of Force Act 2018. NHS-commissioned providers risk contract action. For CQC-regulated providers, inspectors may cite non-certified training as evidence of a Regulation 18 breach, which can lead to a rating of Requires Improvement or Inadequate, enforcement action, and reputational harm. At the commissioning level, non-certified providers are increasingly being excluded from tenders, meaning the financial and operational consequences extend well beyond the inspection cycle.

---