Product safety: baseline compliance research
Results from the baseline compliance research for 700 products tested between October 2021 to March 2022.
Documents
Details
The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) identified a general absence of good-quality national data on consumer product compliance, including the difference between buying in-store compared to online. OPSS commissioned research to build an understanding of the market. Its aims were to:
- develop and test a methodology to generate baseline compliance data across a ‘basket of goods’ comprising popular products bought in-store and online
- develop a system of testing these products in a laboratory setting, against the appropriate standards and regulations
- assess baseline product safety compliance for the OPSS basket of goods
Of the 700 products tested within the OPSS basket of goods between October 2021 and March 2022, 360 were fully compliant with all relevant requirements. In-store had a higher number of compliant products (191 out of 350) compared to online (169 out of 350). Non-compliance involved labelling and marking issues that would likely not directly impact safety. The number of products that could cause harm was similar for in-store (39 out of 350) and online (42 out of 350).
These results cannot be used to estimate compliance at a wider or national level, due to the sampling methodology used.
OPSS found this research to be a useful exercise that demonstrates the need for a strong evidence-base to monitor the changing nature of how consumers buy products. The findings have been used as an intelligence source to inform our regulatory interventions.