official laboratories, which may be in any part of the United Kingdom; and

official plant health officers, where the requirements of paragraphs 1A and 1B are met,

the tasks that the official plant health officer is to carry out as a designated official plant health officer;

the conditions under which they carry out the tasks referred to in point (a);

the arrangements necessary to ensure efficient and effective coordination and collaboration between the official plant health officer and the competent authority.

is suitably qualified, trained and experienced to be able to carry out the activities mentioned in paragraph 1 at an appropriate place, including those listed in Article 44(3);

is capable of reliably carrying out the activities mentioned in paragraph 1 without laboratory infrastructure;

ensures that they will perform the activities mentioned in paragraph 1 impartially and in a manner which is free from any conflict of interest as regards those activities;

satisfies the competent authority that the results of the analyses, tests and diagnoses carried out on the samples can be delivered in a more timely manner than they would if performed in an official laboratory.

the official plant health officer does not comply with conditions specified under paragraph 1A(b);

the official plant health officer no longer complies with the conditions in paragraph 1B.

appropriate arrangements are in place under which the competent authorities are enabled to perform the audits and inspections referred to in Article 39(1)F3...; and

that laboratory is already designated as an official laboratory by the competent authorities of the F4country on whose territory it is located.

the tasks that the laboratory carries out as an official laboratory;

the conditions under which it carries out the tasks referred to in point (a); and

the arrangements necessary to ensure efficient and effective coordination and collaboration between the laboratory and the competent authorities.

has the expertise, equipment and infrastructure required to carry out analyses or tests or diagnoses on samples;

has a sufficient number of suitably qualified, trained and experienced staff;

ensures that the tasks conferred upon it as set out in paragraph 1 are performed impartially and which is free from any conflict of interest as regards the exercise of its tasks as an official laboratory;

can deliver in a timely manner the results of the analysis, test or diagnosis carried out on the samples taken during official controls and other official activities; and

operates in accordance with the standard EN ISO/IEC 17025 and is accredited in accordance with that standard by a national accreditation body operating in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 765/2008.

shall include those methods of laboratory analysis, test or diagnosis required to be used by the laboratory for analyses, tests or diagnoses, when it operates as an official laboratory;

may comprise one or more methods of laboratory analysis, test or diagnosis or groups of methods;

may be defined in a flexible manner, so as to allow the scope of accreditation to include modified versions of the methods used by the official laboratory when the accreditation was granted or new methods in addition to those methods, on the basis of the laboratory’s own validations without a specific assessment by the national accreditation body prior to the use of those modified or new methods.