Protective Clothing: Standards
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, how many personal protective equipment products were tested by the Office for Product Safety and Standards in the (a) 2022, (b) 2023 and (c) 2024 reporting year.
Answered by Kate Dearden
Under UK law, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) manufacturers and importers are responsible for the compliance of PPE placed on the market. As an intelligence-led and risk-based national regulator, the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) prioritises its regulatory activity, which includes product testing, border targeting, market surveillance, enforcement and advice, to best tackle non-compliance and protect consumers. Numbers of notifications to OPSS and published product safety alerts and reports for non-compliant PPE since 2021 are:
Year | PPE Product Safety Database notifications to OPSS | PPE Product Safety Recalls or Reports published by OPSS |
2024-25 | 67 | 110 |
2023-24 | 278 | 94 |
2022-23 | 82 | 18 |
2021-22 | 383 | 7 |
During targeted PPE testing conducted by OPSS between October 2021 and September 2022, 276 out of 315 products did not meet regulatory requirements.
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