Official Statistics

Product Safety Database report 2024 to 2025

Updated 10 July 2025

1) Introduction

The United Kingdom (UK) Product Safety Database (PSD) is the notification system used by local authority trading standards (or environmental health in Northern Ireland), certain national regulators, and enforcement teams from the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) to report unsafe and non-compliant products to the Secretary of State, as required under product safety legislation. ^{[footnote 1]}

Unsafe products are those that pose a risk to the health and safety of consumers, while non-compliant products are those that do not meet the requirements of relevant product safety legislation. A product may be both unsafe and non-compliant.

The PSD was introduced in November 2019 to replace two EU systems – Safety Gate ^{[footnote 2]} and ICSMS (Information and Communication System on Market Surveillance) – in preparation for the UK’s departure from the European Union. This allowed for a transitional period during which Safety Gate and ICSMS continued to be used until the end of the EU Exit transition period on 31 December 2020. OPSS no longer has access to these systems, except where necessary to fulfil commitments under the Windsor Framework.

The PSD is a core dataset for OPSS, offering insight into the market surveillance activities carried out by regulatory officers across the UK. It highlights where activity is most concentrated by product sector and provides an overview of the most frequently reported harms and corrective actions.

Analysis of PSD data can also help identify emerging safety issues, particularly for novel products or within specific sectors, which in turn informs OPSS’s regulatory priorities. These insights support evidence-based decision-making, helping to target market surveillance efforts, reduce risk, and protect consumers.

2) About this release

This report presents high-level findings from the PSD, incorporating notifications of unsafe and non-compliant products submitted by local authorities and national regulators.

The Methodology and Quality Report, published alongside this release, outlines how the data can and cannot be used.

This release does not include year-on-year comparisons, as Market Surveillance Authorities (MSAs) do not yet use the PSD consistently. Any such comparisons would require significant caveats to ensure that observed changes are fully understood. OPSS is working with authorities to improve the consistency and completeness of PSD usage.

In previous publications, only closed notifications were included in the published statistics, while open notifications were excluded. From this release onwards, notifications are counted based on the date they were submitted and include both open and closed cases. This approach has been applied retrospectively to all years of data to ensure consistency over time.

Including open notifications has resulted in revisions to historical data. This change particularly affects figures relating to corrective actions, as open notifications may also contain corrective actions that were not captured under the previous methodology.

Users should be aware of this change when comparing figures with those published in earlier releases. The updated methodology reflects recent system enhancements, which now allow users to input data more efficiently.

As part of these improvements, the ability to manually close a notification has been removed. All notifications are now either in a draft or submitted state. This shift necessitated a revised approach to ensure that all relevant data is captured accurately and consistently.

This report provides the official estimate of the number of product and case notifications submitted to the PSD during the financial year. However, product notification figures should not be used to estimate the total number of unsafe or non-compliant goods at the national level, as there is no guarantee that all such products are reported through the PSD.

3) Total number of notifications

Between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025, a total of 1,418 notifications were received on the PSD, covering 1,792 products. A single notification may relate to multiple products, and the same product may appear in more than one notification. Of the notifications received, 24% were reported as presenting a serious risk, 12% as high risk, 8% as medium risk, 10% as low risk, and 2% as inconclusive.

Table 1. Risk levels reported in product safety notifications, 2024 to 2025

Risk level	Number	Percentage (%)
Serious	335	24
High	173	12
Medium	114	8
Low	143	10
Not conclusive	33	2
Unknown	620	44
Total	1418	100

Source: OPSS Product Safety Database.

In 2024 to 2025, 44% of notifications did not have an assigned risk level, as providing this information is not mandatory at the point of submission.

For more information on how risk levels are defined, please refer to the Methodology and Quality Report.

A full list of products identified as posing a serious or high risk, including those that have been recalled, is available on the Product Recalls and Alerts website.

4) Top 10 product categories

Each product safety notification includes a series of fields focused on product identification, one of which is a pre-coded list of product categories. These categories represent the highest level of product classification.

View the ODS file with the data table showing the full list of product categories.

The most frequently notified product category on the PSD was electrical appliances and equipment (26% of products notified), followed by toys (19%) and cosmetics (12%).

Figure 1. Ten most frequently notified product categories on the PSD, 2024 to 2025

Source: OPSS Product Safety Database.

Table 2. Ten most frequently notified product categories on the PSD, 2024 to 2025

Category	Number	Percentage (%)
Electrical appliances and equipment	470	26
Toys	344	19
Cosmetics	213	12
Childcare articles and children’s equipment	159	9
Machinery	106	6
Clothing, textiles and fashion items	87	5
Personal protective equipment (PPE)	67	4
Jewellery	60	3
Hand tools	48	3
Decorative articles	34	2
All other categories	204	11
Total	1792	100

Source: OPSS Product Safety Database.

Note: The full set of categories is detailed in the accompanying data tables.

5) Top 10 harm types

Table 3 outlines the frequency of notifications for different harm types on the PSD. The list of harms aligns with the EU’s Safety Gate system, ensuring continuity following the UK’s exit from the EU.

A harm type is assigned only to products recorded in the database as ‘unsafe’ or ‘unsafe and non-compliant’. Products recorded solely as ‘non-compliant’ or ‘safe and compliant’ do not require a harm type.

View the ODS file with the data table showing the full list of harm types.

Of the notifications with an assigned harm type, the most frequently notified harm was fire (23%), followed by injuries (19%) and electric shock (15%).

Figure 2. Ten most frequently notified harm types on the PSD, 2024 to 2025

Source: OPSS Product Safety Database.

Table 3. Ten most frequently notified harm types on the PSD, 2024 to 2025

Category	Number	Percentage (%)
Fire	212	23
Injuries	174	19
Electric shock	135	15
Chemical	109	12
Choking	108	12
Asphyxiation	56	6
Health risk	27	3
Burns	22	2
Suffocation	17	2
Cuts	12	1
Entrapment	12	1
All other harm types	22	2
Total	906	100

Source: OPSS Product Safety Database.

Notes:

1. Cuts and entrapment were each reported 12 times, tying in frequency. To reflect this, both harm types have been included in the top 10 list, resulting in 11 entries.
2. Notifications that were classified as ‘non-compliant’ only under the ‘reported reason’ category were excluded from the analysis and percentage calculations (512 in total). The harm types figure and table include only those cases identified as ‘unsafe’ or both ‘unsafe and non-compliant’.
3. The full set of harm types is detailed in the accompanying data tables.

6) Top 10 corrective actions

Table 4 sets out the types of corrective action listed on the PSD along with the frequency of each type of corrective action notified in 2024 to 2025.

Each notification can include more than one product, and each product can be linked to more than one corrective action. However, not all products have corrective actions added. This may be because the investigation is still ongoing, for example awaiting test results, because the product was found to be safe and compliant, and no action was required, or because the database has not yet been updated.

View the ODS file with the data table showing the full list of corrective actions.

In this release, the tables for the reporting years 2021 to 2022, 2022 to 2023, and 2023 to 2024 have been updated. Previously published statistics included only closed notifications, excluding those that remained open. From this release onwards, notifications are counted based on the date they were submitted. This change provides a more accurate and timely representation of activity, as corrective actions can be added at any point after a notification is submitted.

The most common corrective action taken was import rejected at border, accounting for 35% of all corrective actions. This was followed by destruction of the product (19%) and the removal of the listing by the online marketplace (13%).

Figure 3. Ten most frequently notified corrective actions on the PSD, 2024 to 2025

Source: OPSS Product Safety Database.

Table 4. Ten most frequently notified corrective actions on the PSD, 2024 to 2025

Category	Number	Percentage (%)
Import rejected at border	789	35
Destruction of the product	431	19
Removal of the listing by the online marketplace	283	13
Recall of the product from end users	274	12
Withdrawal of the product from the market	155	7
Seizure of goods	84	4
Product back into compliance	76	3
Product no longer available for sale	46	2
Modification programme	45	2
Warning consumers of the risks	31	1
All other corrective actions	41	2
Total	2255	100

Source: OPSS Product Safety Database.

Note: More than one corrective action may be reported for each product; therefore, the categories are not mutually exclusive.

7) Notes

• The full dataset of individual categories for products, harms, and corrective actions is published alongside this report in the accompanying data tables ODS file.
• Read the guidance for market surveillance authorities setting out the notification requirements and other operational processes, including the publication of product safety information and international reporting.
• Read the guidance setting out the requirements placed on business to report to the Market Surveillance Authority where a product they have placed on the market is found to be unsafe.

8) More about these statistics

More information about PSD and revisions to these statistics can be found in the accompanying Methodology and Quality report.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), which sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics are expected to follow.

We welcome feedback on how we meet these standards. You can contact us directly, or reach out to OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or visiting the OSR website.

Responsible statistician: Hannah Palmer

Public enquiries: OPSSanalysis@businessandtrade.gov.uk

Footnotes

1. General Product Safety Regulations 2005 (GPSR), Regulation on Accreditation and Market Surveillance (RAMS) and Market Surveillance and Compliance of Products Regulation 2019/1020. ↩

2. The European Union’s rapid alert system for dangerous non-food products, formerly known as RAPEX, has been renamed Safety Gate. This change was implemented to enhance clarity and better outreach to consumers, making it easier for them to understand and engage with the system. The Safety Gate system continues to facilitate the rapid exchange of information on dangerous products among EU member states and the European Commission. ↩