I still feel that if we in the fire industry don't support and promote 3rd party certification then who will?
Some major RP's in my experience are getting wise to the cheaper non certificated FRAs. I have now dealt with two very large housing providers that went for cheap and cheerful FRAs, paid out several hundred thousands of unnecessary pounds on upgrading the FR, common fire alarms, emergency lighting etc. and are now having the FRAs done again.
We also have the Fire Risk Assessment Competency Council where anyone worth anything in the fire industry contributed to and issued the "guide to choosing a competent assessor". If things go badly wrong for a large RP they would need to justify in Court why they chose to ignore this guide and select a non UKAS accredited assessor or company. I think its only a matter of time for this to come up in the Courts.