​It really has been a first class effort by the civil service, with multiple officials bravely maintaining the line that their regulations work against all the evidence to the contrary, misleading ministers on an industrial scale and heroically lying in their responses to Freedom of Information requests.
 
In short, eleven years ago the Department for Business said that it wanted to introduce a new match/flame test to the furniture fire safety regulations that would reduce flame retardant chemicals in cover fabrics by up to 50%, with the intention to reduce them to nothing soon after. Astonishingly, it also provided the evidence for why the current match test is not effective in around 90% of cases. The new test would be effective.
 
The overall review of the rest of the regulations was also continuing also. Under "Next Steps" in the Department's official response to the 2014 consultation, it said:

• The aim of this would be to enable BIS to launch a new consultation early in the next Parliament, covering all the proposed changes to the Regulations which stem from the stakeholder discussions outlined above, complete with draft regulations, guidance and further technical explanations. 
  

• This would in principle enable the full review to be completed by April 2016. 
  

Officials had decided – against the advice of their lawyers – that they would delay implementation of the new match test; instead roll it in with the rest of the regulations under review. All the same, this meant that the new test would be implemented in April 2016, along with other necessary changes to the regulations. 
 
Ten years on and not single change has yet occurred to these regulations. Despite:
 

• Three public consultations (2014, 2016 and 2023) that drew hundreds of responses from stakeholders, many very detailed. Actually, make that 4 consultations since the Department had also conducted an informal consultation in 2004; which resulted in stakeholders providing a list of 21 needed amendments, none of which has ever been implemented either.

 

• A cost of around £4m to public funds – including the wages of officials, cost of consultations, cost of legal advice, meetings, etc.

 

• The Environmental Audit Committee undertaking a very intensive inquiry into these regulations and concluding in 2019 that the regulations are indeed ineffective and strongly recommended that the OPSS change them to get in line with the rest of the world by scrapping the open flame/match and fillings tests and keeping just the cigarette test. This would lead to UK sofas that were free of flame retardants entirely and which were actually fire safer than they are at present. In particular, the EAC wanted the OPSS to immediately  take children's mattresses out of scope, having been horrified to learn that these products contain large volumes of the kinds of flame retardants that were banned from sheep dip for being so toxic!

 
But it wasn't until January this year that the OPSS published its plans for change to the regulations, and it was rather coy about it, calling it a "Progress Update" rather than a government Response to their consultation, which is what was actually required. But given the above and that a) they have not yet followed up on the first consultation response in 2014 and b) decided to abandon the second consultation in 2016, I suspect they were a little embarrassed to actually call this a Response, especially since all that they are proposing to change (and note "proposing" carries a lot of weight here) is the following:
 

• [To] Remove certain baby and children’s products from scope of the FFRs, where evidence supports their removal from scope. This will reduce babies’ and children’s exposure to CFRs where the risk of exposure to potentially harmful chemicals is greater than the fire risk posed by those products. (A list of the products being removed from scope has been included at Annex A).
• Remove the requirement for manufacturers to affix a display label to new products, reflecting the limited value of the display label.
• Extend the time frame for instituting legal proceedings from 6 – 12 months, providing the right tools for effective enforcement.

The last two are very minor and were intended to happen well over 10 years ago anyway. The third is also pretty redundant – giving Trading Standards 12 months to bring a case against an offender rather than 6 months – when TS has not been able to make any prosecutions (other than a few technical ones) since the 2014 revelations that the regs do not work, anyway.
 
Which leaves the first proposed amendment. I put it in bold because this is in effect the result of over 21 years of work, since the Department of Business first announced they were going to review the regulations properly. Since then there have been dozens of workshops, hundreds of written submissions and papers, over twenty years' worth of British Standards meetings, 4 consultations, several ministerial meetings and hundreds of ministerial letters, a parliamentary committee inquiry – and this is the result. 
 
Most of the baby products they list for removal are small items such as prams and buggies. The Baby Products Association has been lobbying for years to have these smaller items removed from scope, only to meet reluctance and lack of action from the government on the whole. Following the Environmental Audit Committee's recommendation in 2019, however, the OPSS knew it was on borrowed time. So it has clearly decided that it has to be seen to be doing something after yet another consultation, so it might as well give the BPA what it wants, given that you know poisoning children is not a great image.
 
However . . . the EAC made a strong point about removing children's mattresses  from scope. And mattresses are not of course small items. So the OPSS faced a dilemma: how do they remove baby mattresses from scope and not have to face the awkward question of why not then remove all mattresses from scope?
 
So now we come to the specifics of their proposed change:
 
"[P]roducts to be removed from scope of the FFRs

a. Mattresses intended for use by babies and children, if the length is less than 170 cm and the width is less than 75 cm."
 
After reading the background material the OPSS has provided in support of this decision (some in response to my Freedom of Information Request), let me translate this statement for you:
 

• We believe that where furniture and furnishings are concerned, there exist two risks: 1) of fire, which is an actual risk applying across all the objects within scope of the regulations; however, we now also believe 2) there is another possible risk, from chemical poisoning from the flame retardants used to mitigate the first risk. In the case of baby mattresses of the size prescribed, the possible risk from chemical poisoning is now greater than the actual risk of fire.

 
They have provided absolutely no evidence in support of this statement. In my FOI request I asked them for evidence supporting the cut-off measurement of less than 170 cm x 75 cm. They pointed me to a report they commissioned by UCLAN which contains no such measurements nor recommends any cut-off points such as this. It simply discusses the different risks that apply to furniture.
 
No testing or other research whatsoever has been undertaken to arrive at these measurements. Indeed even if possible it would take many years to do so and require the testing of hundreds of different mattress composites and flame retardant combinations at a massive cost.
 
Which means this measurement has been simply plucked out of the air. It just happens to be the common size for a cot mattress, thereby supporting the notion of a "baby" mattress. 
 
What the OPSS is claiming here is that if a mattress is just one centimetre more in length and width, the risk ratio completely reverses, i.e. the mattress is now more an actual fire risk than a possible chemical risk!
 
It's difficult to believe that the OPSS seriously thinks that anyone will be taken in by this nonsense. The Baby Products Association certainly isn't. They recognise that this a cynical exercise to get them onside and note that it is not in any case certain that the OPSS will actually implement this change as this qualifying statement indicates:
 

• "46) In the coming months, we will work with stakeholders to refine a number of key proposals to ensure that new legislation delivers the intended outcomes for both consumers and businesses. Government will provide an update later this year, setting out the final position on the remaining issues highlighted in this document and a roadmap for implementing changes."

 
Note the very careful phrasing which on the surface sounds like they mean business, and quickly, but in fact keeps open the option to continue procrastinating for as long as it suits them. And, as the BPA told me, the OPSS reserves the right to at any time decide that in fact (as they will claim, other stakeholders say) this is not after all a safe option. But it should at least keep the BPA quiet in the meantime.
 
That and, of course, as quoted above [my italics]: Remove certain baby and children’s products from scope of the FFRs, where evidence supports their removal from scope. In other words, and quite incredibly, they allow themselves to make use of the fact, as I've said, that they have no evidence in support of this change in the first place!
 
Summary and what's not happening right now
 
Recently, OPSS officials have been telling people, e.g. British Standards, that the furniture regulations are a "low priority" for new ministers at the Department for Business. Which is another statement that requires unpacking. What they are implying here is that the new minister at their Department is fully aware of all the issues around these regulations and has made his own decision that they are not a priority for his attention. In truth, however -
 
When a new government comes into power every minister at each Whitehall department is given a briefing pack. This is put together by the civil servants looking after each of the many areas within his/her remit. There is of course no way any minister, even one familiar with the subjects to hand, could make an informed decision based on the briefing given to him/her. So what the OPSS really mean is that their briefing paper to the new minister assured him that this was an issue well in hand, papers have been written, British Standards are looking into it, industry is going along with their New Approach, they have just responded to a major consultation with their plans for updating the regs, etc; therefore it's a low priority issue for him.
 
The fact that two major parliamentary groups are right now trying to meet with the new minister to dispute much of what the OPSS are doing, only to be blocked by civil servants is unfortunate perhaps for the OPSS. But hey, they've been here before, back in 2018 when tired of being given the brush-off, the Chair of the APPG Fire Safety and Rescue had to write to the minister to complain. The minister then told his civil servants to start meeting people right away. Which they did, just the three times mind, lied their pants off and got away with it.
 
In short then, OPSS civil servants are deliberately blocking safety changes to these regulations, lying about them constantly, e.g. insisting that these are the best furniture fire safety measures in the world and are saving lives from fire. To help the continuation of the lie, they have self-brainwashed themselves into believing it's true.
 
 

This of course is a very complex subject, made so by the overlapping issues it connects with, each a scandal in themselves. For example, the UK is in constant breach of the Stockholm Convention by ignoring the fact that our incinerators do not burn hot enough to take out the millions of kilogrammes of flame retardants in old sofas and mattresses, with the result, for example, that organic chicken eggs contain high levels of FRs. Also, the fact that recycling plant workers are exposed hugely to FRs when ripping apart old furniture for recycling (which also puts FRs back into new products such as carpet underlay). Also, the fact that UK firefighters are contracting cancers at 6 times the normal rate, due to the high toxicity of UK home fires.
 
All of which underpins the following:
 
a)  The Inquiry's final report on 4 September 2024 stated that all deaths in the fire were caused by two toxic fire gases: carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, but failed to point out that
 
b)  The largest source of these two gases in the fire was the upholstered furniture in the Tower full of flame retardant chemicals, in fact
 
c) The Final Report does not mention even once either furniture or flame retardants; and also does not mention that the furniture flammability regulations were proven to be ineffective 3 years before the fire, also
 
d) That despite 72 people dying from these two toxic gases, government scientists have constantly insisted to the Grenfell survivors that they are not ill from the fire because the fire was not toxic.
 
I want to look at a major factor that is behind these contradictory findings: the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN). For example, three of its fire toxicity professors (one a visiting professor) have between them pretty much controlled the Grenfell fire toxicity narrative: Prof Anna Stec, Prof David Purser and Prof Richard Hull. The first two were expert witnesses to the Grenfell Inquiry, producing a number of reports on the toxicology of the fire (that you can find in the Grenfell online library). Stec actually recommended Purser to the Inquiry, although she failed to tell them, and he did not declare it to them either, that for 4 years he had sat on an advisory panel funded by Chemtura, one of the world's biggest suppliers of flame retardants, and in 2014 signed up to Chemtura's attempt to sue the State of California for introducing new furniture flammability rules which would remove the need for flame retardants. Richard Hull has been and still is prominent in various moves to change the furniture regulations but not in the way recommended by the Environmental Audit Committee in 2019, i.e. to remove two of the fire tests and retain just the cigarette test (getting the UK in line with the rest of the world) which would remove all FRs from UK furniture overnight. Instead, he claims that the current regulations are effective and we just need to find less toxic ways of complying with them. Even though he knows they aren't.

In 2017, a few months before the Grenfell fire, Hull and Stec (and others) published a paper in Chemosphere, entitled: "Flame retardants in UK furniture increase smoke toxicity more than they reduce fire growth rate."

This is from a UCLAN press release, headed, "Cheap chemical flame retardants increase fire deaths: (14/12/2017):
 
"Breakthrough research has revealed that flame retardants used in domestic furniture increase the amount of toxic chemicals produced when it burns, increasing the likelihood of deaths following the outbreak of a fire.
​
"Inhalation of toxic gases in smoke is the primary cause of death from fire in the UK. Bromine, a chemical element often used in flame retardants by furniture manufacturers, increases the amount of the two key toxicants, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, when furniture burns [my emphasis].
 
"Researchers also discovered that flame retardants resulted in only a slight delay to the ignition of furniture, with UK standard furniture blazing within just 5-8 minutes. Furniture made specifically to pass UK flammability tests using higher quality materials but without flame retardants took 15-20 minutes before the first flames appeared, a noticeably longer delay than when using the chemical retardant.
 
"Professor Richard Hull, lead Researcher and Professor of Chemistry and Fire Science at UCLan, commented: “The gases produced when furniture containing flame retardants burn are highly toxic, yet there are currently no requirements to assess the toxicity of smoke from burning furniture. This means there is no incentive for manufacturers to limit the toxicity of the smoke from their furniture"."
 
UCLAN is pretty clear here, I'd say. That flame retardants play a major role in making fires toxic, and are right in line with the Inquiry's finding that toxic gases – carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide – are the primary cause of deaths in fires in the UK
 
But here's the strange thing, following the Grenfell fire UCLAN professors have barely even mentioned this paper or the role of furniture in the Grenfell fire. They've talked plenty about cladding however. When I asked Professor Stec why the Inquiry was only looking at cladding and not furniture she claimed that they couldn't look at two sources to begin with (although she didn't explain why not) but they would look at furniture's role later. They never did. The Chair of the Inquiry – Judge Moore Bick – informed me via his legal secretary that the Inquiry would consider furniture and flame retardants in Phase 2, having ignored them in Phase 1. But they never did.
 
Professors Stec and Purser provided several reports/statements to the Inquiry about the toxicity of the fire. While acknowledging that upholstered furniture would have been one of the main contributors of toxic gases, Purser very much played down its role and very much played up the role of cladding and windowsills, this despite the fact that cladding foam almost certainly did not contain flame retardant chemicals (unlike all those hundreds of sofas, mattresses and cushions which burned in the Tower) and the majority of cladding smoke/fumes would have stayed outside the tower (simple physics). Almost all the toxic gases from furniture would of course have stayed inside the tower. 
 
When the Inquiry asked Purser about furniture he said that you would normally expect it to contribute hugely to toxic gases in a fire but he didn't believe that was the case at Grenfell. He didn't believe . . . provided no evidence or reasoning to back up this statement. Stec's final paper to the Inquiry, written at its request, is built around a curious choice of words the Inquiry put to her: to look into the extent of the various toxic gas sources in the fire. Stec chose to go with extent to mean how far into the tower did toxic fumes extend, rather than what was the extent – in terms of volume/mass – of the sources of those gases. She duly finds that cladding fumes extended far into the tower but without giving any amounts. She then claims that she couldn't determine the amount which came from furniture because there are too many different materials and designs in furniture. I do not think that is true; and certainly in the past she has had no trouble measuring the amounts of toxic fumes/debris content of burnt furniture. For this reason, she in effect dismisses furniture as a toxic gas source altogether. And even if this was true, she could, surely,  at least have stated that x amount of gas came from cladding while a much larger amount, y, came from other internal sources. Instead, she in effect told the Inquiry, and the world, that cladding produced toxic gases that killed people but furniture didn't. And the Inquiry duly got on board by, as said, omitting even a single mention of either furniture or flame retardants in its final report.
 
So this is the bottom line:  in 2017, UCLAN professors demonstrated that upholstered furniture in the UK is far more deadly when on fire than non-UK furniture that does not contain flame retardants - because those chemicals turn into deadly toxic gases in a fire. The same professors later directed the Grenfell Inquiry to totally ignore the role of UK furniture full of flame retardants in the fire, even though sheer logic suggests it was the greatest source of the toxic gases which the Inquiry finally concluded caused all the deaths (bar those who jumped from the building) in the fire.
 
The question of course is why?

 
It seems the OPSS is currently pressing FW/6 (working group at British Standards Institute) to base the new ignition standard for their new furniture regulations on the European standard EN 1021 Part 1 and 2. EN 1021 is for cigarette resistance (Part 1) and match/open flame resistance (Part 2) over a test rig to simulate an upholstered chair. It was originally based on the UK's cigarette and match tests (BS 5852 parts 1&2) with some differences, one of them significant.
 
Here's what's wrong with this plan (as every single member of FW/6 well knows):
 
1.         EN 1021 Part 2 is not as stringent as the UK's open flame test, e.g. the test flame is placed against the fabric for 20 seconds in the UK test but only for 15 seconds in the EN test. Why the difference? Well, it seems that the huge fibre-producing German company Trevira worked hard on the EN committee responsible to get this 5 seconds reduction, having discovered that their fibres will resist igniting for that period of time, but not for 20. The OPSS has banged on for years now about how they will not replace the existing open flame standard with one that is less stringent. The fact they now plan to do so indicates that they have finally twigged that they painted themselves into a corner over this.
 
2.         EN 1021 has some of the same key faults in common with BS 5852. For example, it does not cater for flammable materials close to the cover but not within the main body of say a sofa like the arms (the test rig is in effect two large furniture cushions, meaning that in practice cover material near the arms will ignite because items beneath and close to the cover do not have sufficient foam to protect against catching fire). And the fact that flame retardants wear off of fabrics easily means they will not comply with ignition tests soon after purchase in both test scenarios. 
 
3.         EN 1021 still leads to large volumes of flame retardants in furniture – e.g. some of the worst kinds, like the brominated varieties – in cover fabrics. The OPSS is supposed to be committed to reducing FRs in furniture. 
 
4.         The government itself proved in 2014/2015 that the open flame test in BS 5852 is not effective in practice; it does not prevent ignition. In 2014 it came up with a new open flame test that was effective and also would hugely reduce FRs in cover fabrics. Why therefore is the OPSS not using this to replace the existing test?
 
To summarise (if possible!): in 2014, the government proved that the UK match/open flame test is not effective and proposed a new test that was. From that point on, it delayed making changes, keeping in place a test that does not work and leads to millions of kgs of toxic flame retardants in UK furniture. In 2019, the Environmental Audit Committee recommended that the OPSS drop the open flame and fillings tests altogether. But instead, for the next five years the government created an impasse by setting up British Standards Institute to do the impossible: replace the existing open flame test (which does not work) with one that is just as stringent. BSI could not do so because no such standard exists or is possible to draft. Under pressure, the OPSS went out to consultation late last year on new regulations. It said these will be ready by October 2024 (they won't be). It intimated that the new standards to support the regulations would be ready about the same time. However, BSI told the government (but not the public of course) that it would be at least 2028 before new standards were ready. And that depended on the OPSS telling them what standards they wanted. Which they did not, and could not, do. Now, they are trying to rush through a EN standard equivalent even though:

• They could have done so ten years ago, if that was the answer, which it clearly isn't.
• The EN standard suffers many of the same faults at the current British standard, i.e. it is not effective in practice.
• The government knows that no EU country uses EN 1021 open flame test anyway, one reason being that they do not want large volumes of flame retardants in their furniture.

 
Not one person on FW/6 has made a stand over this, content for a mixture of reasons, most of them financial, to go along with this extended madness that results only in mass cancers and other illnesses in UK citizens, including babies and firefighters.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
The furniture fire safety regulations have become a Gordian knot in which different strands tighten in on each other making the chances of ever unravelling it near to impossible. The confusion is added to by the fact that hardly anyone involved understands even their own part in it. Each strand is ambiguous and impossible to fully understand because of all the unknown factors that contribute to it. This produces contradictions such as abound in a recent UCLAN paper, but it seems even the authors are unaware of them; they're just looking to profit in various ways from the fact that the OPSS seems determined to keep flame retardants in UK furniture (because they are so profitable).
 
Such a knot suits the bad guys because they benefit from it remaining tied. Every time someone with good intentions tries to untie even a piece of it, the bad guys simply point to another bit of it and claim that that answers the question.
 
Having said that, I believe the following can be said about the Regs with a fair degree of certainty:
 
1. They are largely ineffective where fire safety is concerned, as confirmed by a government select committee in 2019 after a thorough investigation.
 
2. They lead to large amounts of flame retardants in UK furniture (though the types and amounts are hard to pin down), including banned chemicals such as DecaBDE. There is no evidence that these FRs contribute positively to a furniture fire but we do know they make it much more toxic. FRs also leach out of furniture and get into people causing all kinds of health problems. These problems should be used to off-set any advantage gained from the regs, but they are not.
 
3. There is no evidence that the regs save lives from fire and there is plenty of evidence from around the world that an absence of flame retardants makes no difference to the number of fire deaths.
 
4. The OPSS is cagey over actual stats but it seems that about 60 fire deaths a year result from fires starting in bedrooms or living rooms (where these regulated furniture products are mostly found). Also that most fire deaths occur in the elderly. We don't know exactly, but we must put at least some of those lives saved down to the increase in smoke alarms and decrease in smoking. If we ascribe say 33% to each, then the maximum lives saved by the regs is about 40. And that's if they actually worked. Which has to be set against the massive toxicity from flame retardants when they burn.
 
5. The OPSS states that smoke toxicity is the largest cause of death in fires but do not provide figures. Therefore, allowance has to be made for the possibility that more deaths are caused by the fact that flame retardants increase toxicity. And that's without mentioning the many illnesses caused by flame retardants in fires that are not even recorded.
 
6. On balance, then, even assuming all the 60 lives saved were from furniture fires (which is not the case, e.g. fires also start in TVs, carpets, curtains, bedding etc), the additional deaths caused by toxic FR inhalation probably balance out such a benefit. In other words, even if the regs were effective, it's reasonable to conclude that ditching them would make no net difference to lives saved, this being born out by the fact that the rest of the world has no such regs yet the drop in furniture fire deaths in recent years is the same as in the UK.

Dear Richard,
 
Elsewhere on this site I've posted my notes on the extraordinary (for all the wrong reasons) "stakeholder engagement" meeting you co-hosted with Sean Valoo on 18th September 2023. To remind readers, this was intended to be, the OPSS had said, an open discussion with stakeholders about the consultation proposals and a chance to have our questions answered. I and others thought, how on earth would they answer all these people's questions (around 80 names were on the copy list) in a 90 mins meeting?

For the record, this was the first full stakeholder meeting held by the government since a two-venue meeting in 2020 (London and Birmingham) which they blocked me from entering (which was why I was a little suspicious to have been invited to this one). And the previous full stakeholder meeting before that had been as far back as August 2015. So just three in 8 years on a subject of incredible importance for the health of the UK population.

As you know, Richard, this meeting was different in two ways. First, it was virtual only and second there was no way for any stakeholder to actually "engage" with it. We could not speak to you, and even the chat function was switched off. Instead we had you and Sean reading out the entire consultation document, which took an hour, despite the fact that everyone on the call had obviously already read it. Then you announced you were going to answer all our questions that we'd sent in for the meeting. Oh, but to help smooth the process, you had sorted the questions into themes; and it was these themes you would actually "answer". I'd put in some very detailed questions, as you'd no doubt expected, but oddly enough they didn't fit into any of your themes, so I didn't get any answers. I wasn't the only one.

I won't go into the details of this Q&A. Let's just say that nothing of any real meat was dealt with. There was one exception and the fact you Richard raised it suggested you really did need to deal with it: our old friend, smoke toxicity. I'm sure you were aware that at this time, the press was writing about high levels of cancers in firefighters, caused by smoke toxicity, and the FBU had just announced that it was going to tackle legislation that leads to flame retardants poisoning firefighters. 
The following exchange has been transcribed from the audio recording of this meeting made by the OPSS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkZsL_v0vnk
 
OPSS official: ". . . another question -  about why are we not addressing smoke toxicity through the New Approach?
          
Jude: Yes, that's a challenging one. The key is, and the starting place in the New Approach, is . . . much of the 1988 regulations is about preventing ignition rather than reflecting and assessing risk post-ignition. And that's the approach we've agreed with senior colleagues and senior stakeholders like fire chiefs; that's the reason we're going down that approach and if we were to completely re-write the rule book it would pose a very long challenge, I think.
 
Let's pause here. I've been a leading expert on these regulations for over ten years, having regular contact with everyone that has a stake in them. Never once have I heard it suggested that "much of the regulations is about preventing ignition rather than reflecting and assessing risk post-ignition". I'm calling you out on this, Richard. Why did you make this clearly false statement about a key subject in fire deaths? Who put you up to it or did you think of it yourself? The sentence that follows is also clearly false since "senior colleagues and senior stakeholders like fire chiefs" could not possibly agree with your premise. But if they have in fact since agreed, then you need to produce evidence that they have: names and statements. But that's not your way, is it? Your way is to lie about key issues, linked to false conflations, all designed to get you personally (and your Department) off the hook, and to hell with fire toxicity that in just about every home fire in the UK is majorly caused by furniture full of flame retardants. To continue:
 
Valoo: Yeah, and I think you know there's appetite amongst us all to deliver a New Approach as soon as possible and I think that taking on the challenge of regulating for smoke toxicity would have delayed us being able to put forward proposals for a New Approach somewhat. 
 
The New Approach does not really exist, of course. And it's not new anyway. In the past, safety laws on the whole were prescriptive, like the furniture regs: they told you exactly what to do to be compliant. Then a different approach came in to EU (and therefore to the UK) safety legislation – also called New Approach - which was less prescriptive laws, like the General Product Safety Directive which pretty much just says that products must be "safe". It's up to the producer to discover what "safe" means, what standards should be applied and so on. Certain, shall we say, profit-minded fire safety big shots were also behind the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, governing the fire safety of non-domestic environments, including upholstered furniture. Again, in order to comply, the "responsible person" has to demonstrate that their premises and products are "safe". And, believe it or not, it's up to them to decide what that means. This replaced legislation that was much more prescriptive. The so-called new "New Approach" is trying to pull the same switcheroo with domestic furniture fire safety. To continue:
 
[Valoo] But, as Richard said, it is something we are considering and many of you raised [this] as an issue; and it's also something we're discussing with colleagues in [inaudible – Delup?] 
 
I think Sean Valoo is referring here to the Department for Levelling Up and this report by them: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6440f2596dda69000d11e15e/Independent_Review_of_the_Construction_Product_Testing_Regime.pdf
 
[Valoo] who have begun a project looking into the smoke toxicity of construction products, and that is a project that fell out of the Grenfell Inquiry, and so we're liaising with them to understand how we can adopt, and do some of what they're doing in that space in terms of, well, products more generally but also in terms of product [inaudible] fire safety.
 
Jude: And I guess the toxicity risk, as well as [kind of listening to the outputs from Delup there?], um, the new framework that our colleagues in the product safety review team are considering – they're looking to kind of consider hazards [inaudible] across different products, so if there is evidence that supports general requirements across certain sectors in relation to smoke toxicity, I'd encourage stakeholders to respond to that consultation as well but that in terms of general requirements that can be put in place across right across the framework, but also in the way we regulate upholstered furniture.
 
You might here be referring to this consultation:          https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-the-new-safety-regime-for-occupied-higher-risk-buildings/consultation-on-the-new-safety-regime-for-occupied-higher-risk-buildings But if so, I'm not sure why since it closed quite some time back and the government responded in Oct 2023. You appear to be saying that smoke toxicity occurs in all sorts of products and Levelling Up is looking at that therefore contact them and not us. The fact that in a home fire, the vast majority of smoke toxicity including the production of hydrogen cyanide comes from burning furniture is something that according to you doesn't concern the OPSS anyway because your regulations are only responsible for pre-ignition issues.

The "engagement" meeting closed soon after this exchange, with you Richard saying, "I think that gives a very good flavour of the questions you've been asking and thank you very much for joining us this morning. I think this has been a very productive session, from our perspective [!] . . . we hope it was useful."

On the surface, the above exchange actually encapsulates all that's wrong with how the government is dealing with what remains a massive scandal regarding public health and the truth about the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy. As I'm sure you're well aware, Richard: at least I can't think of any other reason why you would try and tell the world your department has no responsibility for smoke toxicity in home fires.

I had to keep re-listening to the recording to try to even hear what you were actually saying. Is this confusion deliberate? Well, I don't think it's conscious, as your relaxed body language indicates. It's actually I think more the result of a semi-deliberate policy of spreading one's true intent around several apparently related (but not really) issues, institutions and ideas in order to prevent anyone focussing on the real problem and, more importantly, who's responsible for it. And using the term "Delup" without explaining that this is a slang term for another government department (assuming that it is), suggests you're trying to hide something. At the very least it's disrespectful to your stakeholders.

In summary, I do not believe your claim about smoke toxicity not being your responsibility was a casual statement. You are trying to say that the regs, and your department, are not responsible for smoke toxicity, at Grenfell or anywhere else, because that is all a "post-ignition" matter.
As said, your claims that this approach has been agreed with senior colleagues is of course unverified: you don't say who they are exactly; it could mean only OPSS senior colleagues. Nor do you say where the notes of these discussions can be found. You just say it's been agreed "[with] senior stakeholders like the fire chiefs". 

During this consultation process and in the consultation document itself (page 21) OPSS has been leaning rather heavily on the NFCC to justify their decision to keep an open flame test in the regs; this for example from your consultation proposals:
 
The development of the proposed scope has been supported by research commissioned by the Office for Product Safety and Standards and carried out by research consortia consisting of UCLan, Birmingham University, Oakdene Hollins, and WhaleyResearch. The peer-reviewed Fire Risks of Upholstered Products research and subsequent discussions with the representatives of the London Fire Brigade and National Fire Chiefs Council have considered the extent of the fire safety risk posed by products while also reflecting their foreseeable use and the potential exposure of users to chemical flame retardants.
 
Note, however, that there is no mention here of any direct conversations between the NFCC and the OPSS. So when you Richard say you've "agreed with", you really mean that the OPSS commissioned some research which the NFCC was asked to contribute to (but not the FBU, nor the EAC, nor anyone in fact who might be opposed to the continuation of flame retardants in UK furniture). 
Stakeholders have written asking for the names of the people in the NFCC claiming this and some evidence of the research to back it up. As usual when faced with awkward questions, however, the OPSS did not reply.
​
I won't continue for now. The purpose of this letter is to put questions to you, Richard, as a member of the OPSS team responsible for the furniture regulations. You almost certainly won't respond, mainly because we both know you can't, not without lying further at any rate. My experience with officials like you is you have the enviable ability to convince yourself that you're right, even when all evidence and facts say you're not. This is a very convenient ability to possess since it allows you to side-step any conscience you may still possess. The fact is, however, that you Richard are acting directly against the public good and are responsible, personally, for ensuring that every person, and in particular children and firefighters, in this country will continue to be poisoned in their own homes for many years to come. I hope whatever rewards and promotions you receive in the civil service are worth it.
 
Regards,
 
Terry Edge

For a good overally summary of the situation as of today, read my article in the latest edition of Fire Safety Matters: https://www.flipsnack.com/E59F88BBDC9/fire-safety-matters-mar-2024/full-view.html (starts at page 24).
 
I will for now keep this state of play report to headline points. If anyone wants more information, you can reach me via the Contact page on this site.
 
Bottom line, despite the OPSS's lies to the contrary, there will in effect be no changes to the current regulations until at the very earliest 2028 (which internally British Standards are claiming) and even then it is unlikely that the changes will produce fire-safe furniture with any significant reduction in flame retardants.
 
 
ELEPHANT ONE: THE CURRENT REGS ARE INEFFECTIVE
 
This site is full of the evidence to support this assertion; in short that:
 
1.         The government's own evidence that the regs are ineffective, contained in the papers (still online) supporting its 2014 consultation on a new match/open flame test that would have been effective.
 
2.         The Environmental Audit Commission's final report in 2019 (into toxic chemicals in everyday life) which confirmed that the regs are ineffective and recommended the government drop the open flame and fillings test immediately. 5 years on and it has no intention of doing so.
 
3.         The USA dropped its open flame test a few years back because it has no effect on preventing furniture fires. And the rest of Europe does not utilise the EU open flame standards.
 
4.         There is no evidence that the current tests have ever saved any lives from fire.
 
In support of its proposal to retain the 3-test system in its 2023 consultation on the furniture regs, the OPSS cites the National Fire Chiefs Council as apparently insisting the open flame test is retained. Several people have asked them to provide names and papers accordingly from the NFCC but the OPSS just ignores them.
 
However, in its response to the 2023 consultation the NFCC says this:
"Although the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 have significantly reduced deaths by fire, NFCC agree that a new approach is needed to ensure that domestic upholstered furniture continues to be fire safe and to ensure high levels of consumer protection in the modern home." 
Once again, no evidence is offered in support of these claims. The fact is there is no evidence at all that the FFRs have "significantly reduced deaths by fire". The UK's reduction in fire deaths is pretty much the same as other countries including those, like New Zealand, that do not have any fire safety requirements for furniture. The NFCC wants our furniture to continue to be fire safe, except of course it isn't. It is also suspiciously in line with the OPSS's major contradiction over the so-called new approach, i.e. if the regs are providing fire safety, why do we need new standards?
 
ELEPHANT TWO: WEAR
 
This is probably the biggest elephant and as such is rarely if ever mentioned outside of industry and government. Flame retardants – as Professor Stuart Harrad has been demonstrating in his research for many years – wear off of furniture pretty much as soon as the first person sits or sleeps on it. 
 
In short, everyone inside the furniture business knows that soon after you purchase a piece of furniture, and even if it has been treated properly with flame retardants (an increasingly big "if" especially when industry knows that Trading Standards have for many years not been enforcing the regulations), it's not long before that piece no longer complies with the regs. Which makes a mockery of the OPSS's new proposals that include second-hand furniture.
 
This subject was raised recently in the British Standards Institute's working group, FW/6, which has been commissioned by the OPSS to come up with new furniture standards. It was universally accepted as a key issue and there was talk of undertaking wear tests which would almost certainly show, said a leading test house expert, that the regulations are "redundant". An awkward silence followed him and a resounding silence has followed ever since, with no such work undertaken. 
 
 
ELEPHANT THREE: THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS HUGELY PROFITABLE
 
At a rough estimate, the furniture regulations are worth around £4 billion a year, split between these industries: the furniture makers (who profit from the trade barrier the regs represent), flame retardant producers, the chemical treatment industry (that would probably go out of business if the regs were made safe and FR-free), the mighty foam industry, and the test house industry.
 
If the EAC's recommendations in 2019 were put into effect, all that profit would disappear overnight. Hence, all the hard work by the OPSS and industry to make sure they aren't. Not to mention: 
 
 
SNOUTS IN THE TROUGH
 
The British Standards Committee, FW/6, that was charged with developing new standards for the new furniture regulations has, as reported, not even started work on any new standards some five years after being commissioned. This blog has reported on the reasons why, not least the "impasse" (word used by at least two Chairs of FW/6) created by the OPSS on the one hand saying it needs new standards, while on the other a) not giving any useful indication of what that means and b) failing to explain why it is also simultaneously claiming that the existing standards offer the "gold standard" for furniture flammability that is the envy of the rest of the world.
 
Although several people on FW/6 have complained about this and other contradictions in the process, I was the only one who called out the bottom line, specifically when I told the committee that I appeared to be the only one on it who cared more about public health than industry profit. Following which there was a resounding silence. Later, I was thrown off the committee, because, apparently, two committee members (unnamed of course) later complained to BSI later that what I'd said was "inappropriate".
 
With my removal, guess what? The OPSS started to attend meetings of FW/6 again. They were well over the permitted absence levels under BSI rules and should therefore have been removed from the committee. They'd also claimed that the reason they weren't attending was because I was on the committee! Which if nothing else shows where BSI's priorities regarding protecting their committee members lie. (Just to remind you, when the OPSS heard that BSI had invited me to join this committee, they demanded BSI attend an emergency meeting where they ordered my removal, claiming that I'd been "physically violent" with their staff. My lawyer challenged this and the OPSS then claimed they had not made this accusation, but with BSI contradicting them by informing me what was actually said by the OPSS.)
 
The fact is that no one on FW/6 has complained about my treatment, which kind of supports my contention. Every single one of them is essentially putting profit before health or, as is the case with the "greens", putting their continuing presence on the committee before actually challenging the government. "We must keep our feet under the table," as one of them told me.
 
All of them, therefore, support the continuing use of high levels of flame retardants in UK furniture for many years to come. And with this guaranteed continuance of fire safety laws that do not work, there is of course a very lucrative market also remaining in place. Both for flame retardants and any "alternatives" that people might be working on.
 
And there's one group of snouts in the trough that has become quite prominent. These are scientists, fire experts and even cancer prevention people, who have recently issued a batch of papers – some even paid for by the OPSS! – that focus heavily on reducing flame retardants while not changing the current requirements of the regs (which would be the fastest and most effective way to eliminate FRs). One of these is a leading fire toxicology expert I worked with for many years. He is well aware of the ineffectiveness of the fire regs and indeed pointed it out in one of his earlier papers. He is also very well aware of the massively increased toxicity of fires in furniture that contains flame retardants. He no longer mentions that the regs don't actually prevent fires; nor that their continuing existence (while all sorts of delays remain in place) means that hundreds if not thousands of adults, children and firefighters are suffering cancers and other illnesses. Instead he strongly implies that they would work if they had the right resistance measures in place. He is working with a leading foam manufacturer to develop FR-free foam fillings, while at the same time developing FR-free interliners that can pass the open flame test. He doesn't appear to be aware that, even if they develop such things, the extra cost entailed will almost certainly mean furniture manufacturers continue to use flame retardants instead. Maybe he's hoping public opinion will eventually work against FRs sufficiently for the industry to have to shell out for alternatives. He's built a gang of similar scientists with profit gleams in the eye which the OPSS is only too pleased to back. 
 
Is their behaviour worse than that of the FR industry? Well, you decide. Without me on FW/6 no one else is going to challenge them.
 
 
 
edit.

Yesterday, I sent the email below to over a hundred OPSS stakeholders, including a few members of the OPSS. I attached to it an article in Private Eye's edition of yesterday (see Media Coverage page):

Dear All,
 
Please see attached scan of an article that appears in today's Private Eye. I believe this is a succinct and truthful summary of the current situation regarding the furniture fire safety regulations.
 
OPSS people on this copy list are more than welcome to provide evidence and facts (i.e. not just opinion) that this article is untruthful or misrepresentative. 
 
The last time Private Eye ran an article on the regulations, the OPSS went on a witch hunt to find out who'd provided the information for it. The subject of that article was the fact that the OPSS had appointed an "expert panel" (which it quotes in the current consultation documents, anonymously) with 10 out of the 11 members being strong supporters of flame retardants. The OPSS had been advised by other government departments that these appointments were not in keeping with government good practice guidelines, e.g. they should have sent out an open invitation for relevant people to apply. Anyway, their main reaction to the article was not to explain their actions but to track down whoever had leaked the information. They decided on an official in another Department as being guilty (of simply informing the public of the truth, by the way) and proceeded to destroy his career, hounding him out of his job. This was a good man, a true expert in flame retardant harms. In 2015, for example, he gave a talk at a BEIS stakeholder meeting on the review of the regulations, taking issue with the flame retardant representatives present, citing much evidence of the harm these chemicals cause to human health, and how they enter the food chain on a daily basis. Which, incidentally, indicates just how far BEIS/OPSS have departed from good government practice in recent years. I'm sure I'm not the only one, for example, to note that they still have not provided details, including names, of their experts panel. If there was nothing to hide about these experts, the OPSS would of course be only too happy to tell us all about them.
 
The fact that the OPSS discovered that the official they pursued was innocent of the supposed crime didn't stop them hounding him. Why? Well, and this is pure speculation of course, the flame retardant industry would not have been happy about that article because it exposed their common practice of infiltrating what are supposed to be neutral, balanced, experts committees which then for example push the line, as in the current consultation documents, that the "new approach" is the way to go (and with it the retention of huge volumes of flame retardants in our furniture). It also of course exposes the OPSS's continuing and unexplained support for the flame retardant industry (while at the same time claiming that it is trying to reduce chemicals in furniture). In other words, someone had to be made an example of. A practice quite common for the OPSS, as I well know of course.
 
I suggest to the OPSS that instead of mounting another witch hunt (when there would not be much point anyway in the circumstances) a better use of its time would be to put right the clear bias it has shown for some years now towards maintaining the chemical status quo of the regulations and falsely promoting the opinion that they provide fire safety. It would also be nice if they apologised to the man whose career they unnecessarily destroyed. But on past behaviour I suspect that is somewhat unlikely.
 
Regards,
 
Terry Edge