Businesses are “not persuaded” by the UK government’s plans to introduce a new post-Brexit “UKCA” safety and quality mark, a survey by the British Chambers of Commerce has shown.
A new “UKCA” safety certificate is due to replace the EU’s “CE” mark on all products in the UK from January 2023. It was intended as a statement of the UK’s new regulatory independence after Brexit.
However, the survey indicated that the UKCA scheme, which has already been delayed by a year under pressure from manufacturers and traders, remains hugely unpopular.
Some 59 per cent of BCC members that rely on the quality assurance marks to place products on the market told the survey of 1,000 businesses that they favoured a return to recognising the CE mark.
William Bain, head of trade policy at the BCC, said the findings reflected the “clear views” of business that “they are not persuaded by the case for ditching CE marking in Great Britain.”
On the contrary, Bain added, business saw “strong benefits” in having a single system for certifying industrial and electrical goods that was recognised in both the EU and the UK and avoided the cost of duplicate testing caused by having two different regimes.
“We urge UK ministers to go the extra mile and craft solutions on goods markings which reflect the reality of supply and manufacturing chains, and do not add extra costs at a time of continuing supply chain stress for many businesses,” he said.
The intervention is the latest in a chorus of complaints from business about the UK “Conformity Assessed” mark, which industry has persistently warned will not be ready by 2023 because of a shortage of testing capacity in the UK.
The UK’s Construction Leadership Council wrote to business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng last month to warn that the UKCA marking would cause shortages of building products and materials and damage the government’s “levelling up” agenda.
The UK drone industry, which has often been cited by ministers as an example of where Britain can steal a march on the EU after Brexit, has also issued warnings about a lack of capacity in the UK that could ultimately drive business back to the EU.
For UK exporters surveyed by the BCC, some 49 per cent said they wanted to permanently revert to the CE marking system, while only 8 per cent wanted to end the use of CE marks on January 1 2023, as the government planned.
Responding to the survey, one medium-sized electronics manufacturer in Ayrshire, western Scotland, said it had faced a “monumental task” changing all the labelling on its inventory of nearly 100 products to enable them to serve EU and UK markets.
It added that the cost and bureaucracy had deterred EU customers. “Brexit has therefore lost us business, increased our costs dramatically and killed our sales expansion in the EU,” the company said.
Several other respondents urged the government to continue recognising the EU’s mark, even if they decided to retain the UKCA mark.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said the UKCA mark enabled the UK “to take back control of our own product regulations” and that business had been given two years to adapt to the new rules. “It is important we don’t delay implementation any further,” it added.
UK businesses ‘not persuaded’ by new safety and quality mark
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