UK product-safety notifications fall 37% as border checks do most of the enforcement work

The UK's Office for Product Safety and Standards logged 1,418 unsafe-product notifications covering 1,792 items in the year to March 2025, according to its latest Product Safety Database report, down from 2,258 notifications and 2,772 products the year before. The database aggregates findings from more than 200 local authorities and nine national regulators as they inspect goods on sale across the country.

Electrical appliances and equipment remained the largest category, at roughly 26% of notifications, a position OPSS says it has held for two consecutive years. Toys moved up to second place at 19%, overtaking cosmetics at 12%, a reversal of the previous year's ranking that the report does not explain.

The enforcement data points toward the border rather than the shop floor. "Import rejected at border" was the single most common corrective action, covering 35% of cases, ahead of product destruction at 19% and removal of an online listing at 13%, according to figures summarized by the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association. That pattern suggests customs and import screening, rather than recalls of goods already in UK homes, is catching most of the unsafe products regulators find.

The report also shows a gap in how thoroughly notifications get assessed once logged: 44% of entries carried no risk-level grading at all, while 24% were rated serious, 12% high, 8% medium and 10% low. OPSS has not said in the release whether that missing-data share is new to this reporting year or a recurring feature of how local authorities and regulators file notifications.

The database traces back to OPSS's creation in 2018, after the Whirlpool tumble-dryer recall, in which millions of fire-risk dryers remained in use following what London Fire Brigade publicly criticized as a slow manufacturer response. That history helps explain why the current data centers on notification and corrective-action counts rather than on tracking whether recalled products actually leave consumers' homes; separate research from Electrical Safety First has found that registration rates for electrical product recalls typically run at only 10-20%.

The report lands as Parliament has already moved to extend product-safety duties further up the supply chain. The Product Regulation and Metrology Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 21 July 2025, giving ministers power to write secondary legislation that would hold online marketplaces to the same product-safety obligations as physical retailers, according to analysis from law firm Burges Salmon. Given that online listings already account for a meaningful share of this year's corrective actions, any secondary rules written under the new act will likely be judged against the same PSD notification data OPSS has just published.