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Painting and Decorating NVQs
The Level 2 and Level 3 painting and decorating NVQs, assessed on the jobs you are already doing, with no college and no written exam.
The short version
A painting and decorating NVQ, in plain terms
Nobody is going to teach you to cut in. An NVQ in painting and decorating is an assessment of the work you already do, carried out on your own jobs by an assessor who comes to you, and it ends in a qualification and a CSCS card.
The awarding body calls it Decorative Finishing and Industrial Painting Occupations. Everybody else calls it a painting and decorating NVQ. Same qualification.
Level 2 is the working decorator's standard and gets the Blue Skilled Worker card. Level 3 covers specialist and high-end finishes and gets the Gold Advanced Craft card. You do not have to do Level 2 first, and if your week is already Level 3 work you should not.
- No college, no classroom and no written exam
- Assessed on the jobs you are already painting
- Fast track for decorators who have been at it for years
- Leads to the Blue or Gold CSCS card
- Awarded by GQA, Ofqual regulated
Start here
Which level do you need?
Neither level is a prerequisite for the other. If the work you do already is Level 3 work, you go in at Level 3. The two minute check on any of these pages will tell you which one your day job evidences.
Level 2, the working decorator
Blue CSCS Skilled Worker card
Preparation, application by brush, roller and spray, papering, and making good. The standard the industry means when it says a decorator is qualified.
Level 3, specialist finishes
Gold CSCS Advanced Craft card
Specialist and decorative finishes, complex surface preparation, and leading work on site. If that is what you are doing, start here.
The list
The qualifications in this trade
Prices shown are the whole qualification. Level 2 and Level 3 are separate qualifications, not stages.
Method of assessment
How the on-site assessment works
Five steps, and four of them happen on your own jobs.
The online check
Two minutes on this site. It asks what you do, how long you have done it and what evidence you can lay hands on, and tells you which level fits. That check is the initial assessment: there is no separate interview to sit through afterwards.
Register and meet your assessor
You are registered with the awarding body and given one named assessor who stays with you from start to finish. They ring you first, before anything else, to agree the units and work out what you already have that counts.
They come to you
Your assessor visits you on your own jobs, in your own working week. They watch you work, take photographs, ask you why you did it that way and record it against the units. Nothing is staged and nothing is done in a workshop.
Evidence in between
Job records, photographs, drawings, a witness statement from your supervisor. You upload it as you go and your assessor tells you exactly what is still missing, so you are never guessing.
Certificate, then the card
Once the evidence is complete it goes for verification and the certificate is issued. The CSCS card is a separate application to CSCS, with their own fee, and you need a current CITB Health, Safety and Environment test pass to go with it.
For employers
Putting a squad through
Most of this work is done for employers rather than individuals, because it is cheaper and far less disruptive that way round.
- One assessor covers the whole squad, so there is one person to deal with
- Everyone stays on the job. No day-release, no travelling, no lost production
- Different trades and different levels can run alongside each other
- One invoice, and we will tell you where every candidate has got to
- CITB Health, Safety and Environment tests booked in the same block
- CITB grant support where your company is registered and in scope
Painting and decorating NVQs: common questions
£850 + VAT for the Level 2, and £950 + VAT for the Level 3. That is the whole qualification: registration with the awarding body, your own assessor, the visits, the portfolio and the certificate. There is no course fee on top because there is no course to attend, and no exam fee because there is no exam. The CSCS card is applied for separately and CSCS charge their own fee for it.
Level 2 is the working painting and decorating standard and it leads to the Blue Skilled Worker card. Level 3 is for the more complex end of the trade and leads to the Gold Advanced Craft card. Neither is a prerequisite for the other: if you are already doing Level 3 work you go straight in at Level 3 rather than working up. The check on this site takes two minutes and will tell you which one your day job actually evidences.
No, and there is no written exam either. The assessment happens on your own jobs, during your own working week, with your assessor coming to you. That is the whole point of an NVQ: it measures what you already do rather than teaching you something you already know.
Yes, and for a time-served painting and decorating that is the normal route. There is no fixed length, because the pace is set by how quickly the evidence comes together rather than by a timetable. Somebody who already has photographs, job records and a supervisor willing to sign a witness statement often finishes inside a few weeks. Nobody waits for a term to start.
Level 2 leads to the Blue CSCS Skilled Worker card and Level 3 to the Gold CSCS Advanced Craft card. Gold is the advanced craft card, not a supervisor's card: supervising is a different qualification again. Both need a current pass on the CITB Health, Safety and Environment test, taken within the two years before you apply, and the card application goes to CSCS rather than to us.
Because that is the awarding body's title: the NVQ Diploma in Decorative Finishing and Industrial Painting Occupations. Painting and decorating is the pathway inside it. CSCS and employers read it as a painting and decorating NVQ, and it is the qualification CSCS want for a decorator's card.
It is the name given to the practical part of the assessment when the candidate is already working in the trade, which on this route is almost everybody. Rather than setting you a task in a workshop, your assessor watches you do your own work on your own job and records it against the units. There is nothing extra to prepare for and nothing to revise.
Yes. Industrial painting sits inside the same qualification as a pathway of its own, so protective coatings, steelwork and plant all count as evidence rather than being a separate qualification. Tell us what you actually paint and your assessor will pick the units that fit it.
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