Office for Product Safety and Standards

The Product Regulation and Metrology Act 2025 gives the government wide-ranging powers to introduce specific regulations through secondary legislation, enabling it to respond more rapidly to pressing safety issues and technological advances. It is already planning a new regulatory framework for online marketplaces. It is also likely to ensure that the UK product regime reflects many updates to EU rules, promoting regulatory stability and keeping down compliance costs. Business will be watching for draft regulations in the coming months, as well as for other possible changes the government can now introduce to, for example, facilitate the sharing of information by regulators, create new criminal offences, impose civil sanctions and, crucially, empower the OPSS (and others) to secure compliance.

The OPSS enforces the UK’s security regime for connectable consumer products, which came into effect in 2024. While it is so far taking a proportionate and pragmatic approach, it has considerable enforcement powers. In extreme cases businesses could face substantial monetary penalties, with the OPSS most likely to impose these to tackle financial gains from non-compliance, change the behaviour of a business or deter future non-compliance. Cybersecurity is still a new area of responsibility for the OPSS, but with the growing volume and sophistication of cyber attacks this will be an increasingly significant part of its brief.

The OPSS recently updated its study of the impact of AI on product safety. Focusing on consumer products, this examines product safety opportunities, benefits, challenges and risks, as well as regulatory and policy developments. It makes a few proposals – for example, that the UK could implement a reporting system for AI incidents. More radical reforms will probably result from the Law Commission’s review of how the product liability regime applies to emerging technologies such as AI-driven and digital products.

In February 2025 the government published a green paper setting out proposals to strengthen the regulation of construction products. A white paper is now expected to follow in the first half of this year. At the moment the National Regulator for Construction Products (NRCP) is part of the OPSS. The green paper proposes changes to the regulatory regime, including stronger enforcement powers and broader regulatory coverage. In the first instance these changes are likely to affect the NRCP. In the longer term, the regulation of construction products may be transitioned to the single regulator that has been proposed for the wider construction sector.

Theresa May’s government created the OPSS partly in response to mounting concerns about faulty domestic appliances, particularly after the Grenfell Tower fire. Given the urgency, the OPSS was set up within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (as it was then) rather than as an arm’s-length or independent regulator. This structure has periodically attracted criticism – the UK ‘consumer champion’ Which argues that the OPSS would be more effective as an arm's-length regulator with an unambiguous duty to protect consumer interests and public health. However there is no sign of any changes to the status quo.