BRCGS Unannounced Audit: Date Range Confirmation Needed

You are correct in your thinking 

Thank you Scampi for confirming, that’s reassuring!

If our certification was delayed during Covid and every certification since than has used the new deadline, (May before Covid, November after Covid) what is the rule?  Our certifying body (new last year) sent us a date range that was neither of those dates listed.  

2023 Cert states  (it was a 2 day Nov 29th and 30th audit)

>Audit Date 30/11/2023 >Re-audit due Date 01/12/2024

It does not matter what date your last BRCGS audit was completed; the audit due date is always the same. For example, if your audit due on 1st December 2025, it will be 1st December 2026, 2027 etc. The certificate expiry date is 6 weeks after the audit due date and this does not change either.

What does differ is the audit window; if it is announced, it is usually 4 x weeks so in the above example, the audit window would be 3rd November - 1st December. If it is unannounced (either voluntary or every 3 years), the window is 4 x months so in the above case it is 1st August - 1st December.

My company is unannounced every year as it is a requirement for most UK retailers but in the 15+ years that we have been unannounced, the earliest we ever had the audit was 6 weeks prior to the due date. However, I know of sites that had the audit 3 months before the due date, (in one case 6 months, back in the day when it was a 9 month window).

As I said, the due dates never change, theoretically if you could have the audit at the start of the window one year and at the end the following year with a 16 month gap between audits

We had audits both at the start (first week) and end (last week) of the unannounced audit window.  It can happen, especially when most audit bodies are short of auditors and absence is a problem everywhere, auditing is no different.