The Office for Product Safety & Standards launches strategy to further enhance the UK’s world leading product safety regime

UKAS welcomes the publication of the Government’s first ever Strategy to improve the UK’s product safety regime. The Office for Product Safety and Standards which was established in January as part of the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is one of UKAS’ national quality infrastructure partners. UKAS is pleased to note that the new Strategy and accompanying delivery plan recognises the importance of accredited conformity assessment to an effective product safety regime and commits to working more closely with accredited testing organisations to ensure the continued availability of a sufficiently rigorous and independent testing capability.

Other measures set out in the Strategy and accompanying delivery plan include:

• A new national incident management team for product safety incidents capable of coordinating large scale product recall and repair programmes
• Increased support for local authority enforcement teams at ports, borders and points of entry to ensure the safety of goods that are entering the UK
• Close working with manufacturers to ensure they are compliant with safety regulations from an earlier stage of the production process
• Working with white goods manufacturers, gaining assurance that their compliance systems are robust and that they are implementing the Product Recalls Code of Practice
• Publishing a Strategic Research Programme, setting out priorities for scientific research into potential product safety risks
• Encouraging greater diversity in standards committee membership

The Strategy and Delivery plan can be found at  the Strengthening national capacity for product safety: Strategy 2018-2020