There are three possible outcomes of an accreditation assessment; accreditation awarded, accreditation not awarded or accreditation deferred. Accreditation deferred indicates that the assessment team found a few areas of the standards that needed some improvement or additional evidence to demonstrate full achievement. A service has a maximum of 6 months to improve on those areas before a final outcome is reached. At the end of this period, accreditation is either awarded or not awarded.
It is quite common for services to be deferred before achieving accreditation; in fact, this can sometimes be beneficial for services to get the support they need from across the organisation.