SMSTS and SSSTS Renewal | What the Refresher Covers

An SMSTS or SSSTS certificate runs for five years from the date you passed. Renew it before that date and you take a refresher: one day for SSSTS, two days for SMSTS. Miss the date and the refresher is closed to you. It is the full course again, two days or five.

There is no grace period and no appeal. CITB sets that rule for every Site Safety Plus course, and a provider who tells you otherwise is not going to be able to register you.

Find your expiry date before you do anything else

It is printed on the certificate, and it is also on the CITB record. If you cannot put your hands on the certificate, check before you assume: people routinely discover they have eight months left when they thought they had two years, or the reverse.

Book the refresher with a few months to spare. Refresher dates fill up in the same seasonal pattern as the full courses, and leaving it to the last fortnight is how people end up repeating five days.

What the refresher actually covers

It is not a shortened repeat of the original. The refresher assumes you have been doing the job and concentrates on what has moved since you last sat in the room.

Changes in health and safety legislation and in CITB guidance since your last certificate.
Current industry practice, and the incidents that changed it.
A refresh of the core duties: risk assessment, method statements, monitoring, and your own legal position.
The assessment. CITB sets it, it is taken during the course, and the pass mark is 80 per cent, the same as the full course.

Construction workers in hi-vis vests seated in a CITB training classroom while a trainer explains at a whiteboard

SSSTS Refresher and SMSTS Refresher are not interchangeable

You renew the certificate you hold. An SSSTS holder who has been promoted to site manager does not renew onto SMSTS: they take the full five day SMSTS, because the refresher only renews the thing it refreshes.

If it has already lapsed

SSSTS expired: take the full two day SSSTS.
SMSTS expired: take the full five day SMSTS.
Either way the new certificate runs five years from the new pass date, not from the old expiry.

It is worth saying plainly that this is the most avoidable cost in construction training. A one day refresher becomes a two day course, or a two day refresher becomes a week off site, purely because a date passed unnoticed. Put the expiry in a diary the day you pass.