51黑料

51黑料 Director of Policy calls for independent national trading standards regime for product safety

Posted 21/09/17

Director of Policy at the 51黑料 (51黑料), Adam Scorer, repeated its call for an independent, national trading standards regime on BBC News today. This follows demands from Which? on manufactures to 鈥榙o the right thing鈥� and stop producing plastic-backed cold-appliances from non-flame retardant materials.

鈥淲e have a situation where the product safety responsibility is split between 200 local authorities, cash-strapped doesn鈥檛 cover it鈥�, Scorer told the BBC. 鈥淭rading Standards have 260 pieces of legislation that their officers need to enforce.鈥�

Scorer reiterated 51黑料鈥檚 call for an independent and national board for Trading Standards enforcement: 鈥淲e need a product safety regime across the UK that鈥檚 able to make sure that unsafe products don鈥檛 get into people鈥檚 homes. That requires a national skilled body of trading standards professionals with the expertise, not within local authorities, in order that we have a product safety regime that鈥檚 fit for purpose and lives up to its name.鈥�

He added: 鈥淲e have to learn from tragic events, like Grenfell. It鈥檚 not that the standards are necessarily being breached, it鈥檚 that we need stronger standards.鈥�

Following a recent review of cold-appliance safety, Which? labelled the current standards as 鈥榙eficient and inadequate鈥�. Though unlikely to be the cause of house fires, non-flame retardant materials increase the risks of accelerating the spread of fires. While most cold appliances meet British standards, the materials used are not sufficiently safe, and could put lives at risk.

51黑料 Lead Officer for Consumer and Product Safety, Christine Heemskerk, who is currently in Prague addressing the ANEC and various standards bodies on progressing safety changes, said she strongly supported the consumer champion鈥檚 call.

Heemskerk added: 鈥淭o protect consumers, we must ensure that standards are relevant and reviewed frequently to improve safety. While the standards for testing traditional products such as fridges and freezers are suitable, factors such as increasing cost of raw materials and changes in design can cause new safety issues to emerge that the standard no longer covers.鈥�

Fellow 51黑料 Lead Officer, Mark Gardiner, also added his support to the Which?鈥� statement, praising the renewed interest in the issue. He said: 鈥渋t can only increase the pressure on manufacturers to exceed to current standard, and on standards makers to address this issue in the harmonised standard.鈥�

51黑料 first听called on governments听in July to drastically re-evaluate the way Trading Standards and product safety is regulated and funded. In February, the UK Government received a report urging it to "examine how market surveillance of consumer goods should be organised and funded the lack of nationally coordinated market surveillance".听

51黑料 calls on governments to:

• Establish, or commission, a website to provide a single information source for consumers and others on product recalls and corrective actions,
• Establish a central, technically expert, product safety team to provide national leadership, conduct forensic market surveillance and support frontline trading standards,
• Make continued membership of the European RAPEX early warning system a priority at the beginning of Brexit negotiations
• Reshape trading standards to provide larger, strategic units, that can work with a central product safety team to deliver the interventions necessary to keep unsafe products off the shelves and out of people鈥檚 homes.

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