Our Own Rules: The UK Product Safety Consultation And The Risk Of Regulatory Divergence From The EU

Product safety law is undergoing a significant overhaul on both sides of the Channel.

In the EU, the General Product Safety Regulation (EU) 2023/988 (“GPSR”) came into force on 13 December 2024, replacing the decades-old General Product Safety Directive 2001/95/EC and applying directly and uniformly across all 27 EU Member States.

In the UK, the Department for Business and Trade has recently published a consultation on an entirely new product safety framework. Whilst the Government is already using powers under the Product Regulation and Metrology Act 2025 to update technical legislation, the consultation makes clear that delivering the “significant step-change that will be felt by businesses and consumers alike” requires a fundamental reconsideration of the core safety framework.

For businesses selling into both markets, divergence means duplicated compliance, increased costs, and the risk that a product which satisfies the regulatory requirements of one jurisdiction may nonetheless be non-compliant in the other. Although the UK consultation acknowledges an intention to “support trade with the EU and globally,” it is equally clear that the new framework will be “our own rules, made in the best interests of UK consumers and businesses”.

Scope and Definitions

Both regimes aim to establish general, cross-cutting safety frameworks, rather than regulating individual product categories. The GPSR covers all non-food consumer products, including those sold online. The UK consultation goes further. It proposes to cover not only consumer products but also “business products”, being those supplied to businesses or other organisations for their own use, such as machinery or products used in the workplace. This broader scope is itself a significant potential divergence from the EU position, and businesses supplying products for professional or organisational use in the UK will need to consider whether they fall within the new framework’s reach.

A structural difference may emerge. Specifically, whilst the UK consultation signals a desire to consolidate sector-specific regulations into the general framework, the GPSR operates as a “safety net” beneath existing harmonised product legislation.

The UK consultation also proposes updated definitions of supply chain actors. The “producer” category will follow the precedent of the existing General Product Safety Regulations 2005, but the consultation proposes a broader “onward supplier” concept, alongside a distinct “online marketplace” category. The GPSR, on the other hand, groups manufacturers, authorised representatives, importers, distributors, and fulfilment service providers under the umbrella of “economic operators”.

Online Marketplaces

The GPSR imposes obligations on online marketplaces under Article 22, including a requirement to designate a single point of contact for communication with domestic regulators, and to register with the Safety Gate Portal and comply with take-down orders. However, it also expressly provides that these obligations should not amount to a general obligation to monitor information which online marketplaces transmit or store.

The UK consultation goes further, proposing a duty on marketplaces to “practice due diligence to identify and take action against ‘bad actors’”. It contemplates requiring test purchasing, compliance documentation reviews, and (in the case of high-risk products) suspending listings until safety assurance is obtained. This is much more interventionist than the EU regime.

Supply Chain Obligations and Enforcement

Both regimes require producers to place only safe products on the market and to cooperate with enforcement authorities. One notable gap is that the GPSR requires a “responsible person” (an economic operator established in the EU) for every product on the market, whereas the UK consultation does not appear to propose an equivalent requirement.

In terms of enforcement, the UK consultation proposes civil monetary penalties and consolidated enforcement powers, potentially creating a more uniform (albeit stricter) penalty regime than the EU, where sanctions can vary across Member States.

Areas of Potential Alignment

Businesses should be reassured that there appears to be alignment in several areas.

Both regimes share the concept of the general safety requirement, namely that only safe products may be placed on the market. Further, the UK consultation expressly proposes to “broadly mirror” the considerations for assessing safety contained in the GPSR. Both regimes also apply to products sold online and offline, and both regimes seek to address the challenges of overseas sellers and cross-border e-commerce. Finally, the UK’s approach to the Windsor Framework means that Northern Ireland will continue to operate under both regimes simultaneously, thereby preserving dual market access.

What Businesses Should Do Now

Businesses operating in both markets should consider:

• Mapping compliance architecture against both the GPSR and the emerging UK framework, identifying products and channels where divergence may create gaps;
• Engaging with the UK consultation (responses due by midnight on 23 June 2026) to help shape the final legislation and flag areas where alignment would reduce business compliance burdens;
• Reviewing online marketplace arrangements, given the divergent allocation of responsibility between sellers and platforms across the two regimes; and
• Building adaptable compliance systems where product information, labelling, traceability, and risk assessment processes can be configured for both markets, rather than maintaining separate UK and EU compliance programmes.