Product Safety Regulations

The General Product Safety Regulations 2005 created a new statutory regime for product safety in terms of management issues and enforcement. 

They were designed to encourage product manufacturers to be transparent and proactive when product safety issues arise.

The key theme of the regulations is self-enforcement by manufacturers, backed up by serious criminal penalties for those who fail to act appropriately. 

The regulations give powers to Trading Standards departments to take action, from providing advice at one end of the scale to requiring product recall or withdrawal at the other.

The regulations provide that businesses should constantly review their existing product lines.

It is of the utmost importance that companies operate their production facilities with a degree of sophistication and control in the area of quality so that dangerous products are the unpredictable exception rather than the unwelcome rule. 

You can never review the risk too often and companies should place product safety at the core of their ethos. 

Corporate reputation is a fragile asset in an environment where transparency of reporting problematic products is obligatory.

Directors and officers know they have no discretion in the matter. Any failure to comply will have disastrous consequences at individual and corporate level. 

As well as the risk of criminal charges and possible jail terms for directors for a breach of the regulations, companies also face the operational commercial risk of their products being branded publically as dangerous. This can have serious long-term implications for the reputation and standing of the business. 

The regulations are an issue that companies must address at the highest strategic level. In terms of civil liability, however, they add nothing to previous law covering this area. 

Companies will have to think extremely carefully before committing to bring to market a product which has any predictable or identifiable form of risk associated with it. Issues of reputation and shareholder value demand that the company commits to implementing the safeguards required.

But by understanding the regulations and building systems internally to minimise risk, companies might be more confident bringing products to market.

* David Birks is a specialist litigator in the company law team at Blackett Hart & Pratt in Darlington. For more information, contact him on (01325) 466794.