The BMTA broadly welcomes the introduction of the Product Safety and Metrology Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 21 July and has now passed into UK law. The Act has a broad scope, and could be applied to almost any product, but has a schedule of specific exclusions that include food, plant products, agricultural feeds, aircraft and aircraft components, military equipment, medicines, and medical devices.
The new legislation gives the Secretary of State power to create new regulations designed to target new and emerging risks, and we hope that the government will prioritise using these new powers to regulate the supply of high-risk products such as e-mobility batteries that are responsible for hundreds of fires and injuries each year according to the London Fire Brigade and the charity Electrical Safety First. Given the risk from these products, BMTA hopes that the government will include provision for mandatory independent accredited safety testing of higher-risk batteries within any regulation it creates.
The Act also allows government to include provisions within any new regulation that could hold the online marketplaces to account for the safety and compliance of products sold via their platforms, potentially creating a long-overdue level playing field with traditional “bricks and mortar” retailers, as online marketplaces do not feature as an economic operator within any of the existing product regulations. Consumer publication “Which?” has been campaigning on the subject of unsafe and/or illegal products sold via the online platforms for many years, and much of the testing that “Which?” relies on has been performed by BMTA member companies, so we are well aware of the scale of the problems being reported.
The Act also allows government to create new regulations to ensure that products designed for weighing or measuring operate accurately and also specify which units of measurement may be used to express quantities (but not of milk or beer…).
We now must see what happens next and we hope that government will move swiftly to enact regulations to deal with the highest risks. BMTA will participate in any consultation on behalf of its members.
