Protective Clothing: Standards

(asked on 10th October 2025) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, how many personal protective equipment products were reported to the Office for Product Safety and Standards in the (a) 2022, (b) 2023 and (c) 2024 reporting year.


Answered by
Kate Dearden Portrait
Kate Dearden
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
This question was answered on 20th October 2025

Under UK law, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) manufacturers and importers are responsible for the compliance of PPE placed on the market. As an intelligence-led and risk-based national regulator, the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) prioritises its regulatory activity, which includes product testing, border targeting, market surveillance, enforcement and advice, to best tackle non-compliance and protect consumers. Numbers of notifications to OPSS and published product safety alerts and reports for non-compliant PPE since 2021 are:

Year

PPE Product Safety Database notifications to OPSS

PPE Product Safety Recalls or Reports published by OPSS

2024-25

67

110

2023-24

278

94

2022-23

82

18

2021-22

383

7

During targeted PPE testing conducted by OPSS between October 2021 and September 2022, 276 out of 315 products did not meet regulatory requirements.

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