Product Safety in the Digital Age: Is the UK's New Act Enough?

Household names are selling more and more products through online marketplaces.

While the benefits are being amplified to consumers, like more product choice from retailers, market access for SMEs and small businesses and greater competition (often driving prices lower), the risks to consumers were not obvious enough.

For too long, online marketplaces have been able to take advantage of a legislative lag making them free from liability for any goods sold that do not meet UK product standards. This route to market enabled substandard and sometimes dangerous products to be sold in the UK.

In 2021/22, data from the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) found that 81% of the 2,260 products that it targeted for testing from online marketplaces were non-compliant. Electrical Safety First reported that 93% of electrical products sold via online marketplaces were unsafe and Trading Standards released its own report on the issue here.

In July, the UK Government looked to address this and announced tough new laws to make online marketplaces safer, which has since received Royal Ascent. With businesses expected to receive new rules on listing products imminently, is this Act meaningful reform?

Formally titled the: Product Regulation and Metrology Act 2025, this new legislation looks to toughen the rules on marketplaces to hold them more accountable for the products they sell, whilst boosting the powers of regulators to tackle unsafe products. However, with a fragmented system of market regulation in certain sectors it’s hard to understand how effective this will be.

In the PPE sector for example, the responsibility for ensuring the safety of products in the market sits with the OPSS, local authority Trading Standards teams, and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). This fragmented approach, with overlapping remits, means that no single body is fully accountable for ensuring all PPE on the market is safe, compliant, and used correctly. For this new bill to be effective, it must also be able to give these regulatory bodies the resources they need to act swiftly.

Will this act make a real difference for consumers and workers, or will unsafe products continue to slip through the net?