Fireworks: Public Sales Debate
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Stephanie Peacock
Main Page: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley South)Department Debates - View all Stephanie Peacock's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Fireworks: Public Sales
Stephanie Peacock Excerpts(5 years, 12 months ago)
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Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend mentions our laws about fireworks. Although those laws are often enforced, cuts to local authority budgets have meant that the staffing levels necessary to enforce them have fallen by more than half in the past few years. Does she agree that that makes it a lot harder to regulate the use of fireworks?
Helen Jones
My hon. Friend is right, and she anticipates a point that I will make later.
The Fireworks Regulations 2004 introduced a lot of rules about the sale, possession and use of fireworks. They introduced a licensing system for those who sell fireworks all year round, limited the sale by other suppliers to dates around 5 November, new year, Chinese new year and Diwali, imposed a maximum decibel level of 120, and forbade the possession of adult fireworks—those in the F2 and F3 categories—in a public place by anyone under 18. F4 fireworks, which are the most explosive, can be possessed only by fireworks professionals.