We are now more than ten years on from when the Department for Business announced in a formal consultation that the current FFRs are not effective and proposed a new ignition test that everyone not working for or getting bribed by the chemical industry agreed would work, along with reducing flame retardants in UK furniture cover fabrics by around 50%. The same consultation also declared that the government's intention was to remove all flame retardants from UK furniture, following the implementation of the new test. The official government Response to this consultation stated that the Department intended to implement changes to all of the Regulations, including putting in place the proposed new ignition test, by April 2016.
Since then absolutely no changes at all have been made to the FFRs.
In 2019 an all-party parliamentary committee – the Environmental Audit Committee – concluded its inquiry into these regulations by agreeing that they are ineffective and recommending the government change them immediately. Instead, the government went out to consultation yet again, although what they were actually proposing was unclear to everyone. And they were now claiming that in fact the current regulations areeffective but without offering any evidence, facts or logic to justify taking a U-turn on their previous findings.
On the face of it, this is unbelievable. Therefore I thought it might be useful to set out a timeline in support of the above statement. Apart from where I am obviously speculating, all the events listed below are taken from official documents; from the horse's mouth so to speak. The fact that the Department doesn't any longer have any copies of most of these documents is, well, another story. It's certainly convenient for them.
1988
The regs are implemented after a somewhat rushed creation. A few minor amendments are necessary in 1989. Despite being a recognised barrier to EU trade, the UK government claimed the Commission approved them as national regs because the UK proved it had a furniture fire safety case to answer (there is no evidence of this on file, however, and it makes little sense since furniture is similar across Europe).
2004
Industry and other stakeholders had been pressing the government to amend the regs. DTI (Department for Trade and Industry) officials were reluctant but Minister Melanie Johnson finally agreed and asked industry to present her with possible amendments. They did so, submitting 21 suggestions, all of which were valid. But Johnson reneged, claiming that only enforcement needed looking at and passing the buck to Trading Standards. Internally, officials believed that amending the FFRs would give the EC the opportunity to challenge them (further suggesting that it did not approve of them originally, either). These suggestions remain outstanding to the present day as the Regulations have not been amended since 1989 (apart from a minor change in 2010 – see below).
2009
The Greenstreet Berman Statistical Report (commissioned by BIS (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – previously DTI)) is published. It concludes that the FFRs are still required and are saving around 54 lives per year. These estimates are based, however, on the assumption that the FFRs worked (even so, it's never been possible to say how many lives are saved, only by how much the number of fire deaths has reduced); in 2014 it's revealed by the Department that the regs are actually ineffective therefore the GB report is invalidated. To the present day, however, it's still cited by industry as proof the regs are working/needed.
2010
BIS hosts 4 meetings of a FFRs Stakeholder Advisory Group (around 38 people) to advise the Minister of the best way forward with the Regs. Three options are workshopped: Revoke, Do Nothing, Amend. There is unanimous agreement to Amend, and Minister Ed Davey gives approval to that end (and to make an early, minor, amendment as a separate issue – see below) on the basis of estimated savings to industry, fire services, enforcement authorities of around £36m per year – mostly to fire services and Trading Standards; also to industry via better defined regulations. At this time it is believed that the Regulations work.
Industry informs BIS that due to a flaw in the original wording of the Regulations, one of the fire tests has never been legally applied. The Department convenes meetings with experts, new wording is drafted, the test is made viable, the European Commission is consulted and an amendment is issued – all within six months. This, compared with the Department finding a similar fault in the main ignition test in 2014 which remains unfixed more than ten years later. The difference being that putting right the 2010 fault did not cost industry money whereas putting right the 2014 would have cost industry many millions.
2011
BIS publishes an open letter, announcing the ‘Amend’ decision, inviting comments via informal consultation, stating that the Advisory Group will be reformed (now around 50 members) to work on three key areas – Testing, Scope and Traceability - which they then do over the following two years, gathering a large volume of expert data. This data is used to inform the 2014 consultation (see below) but has subsequently been completely ditched by the Department when it announced in 2019 that it was starting again from scratch (no reason given).
2012
BIS hosts 4 workshops with 5 leading test houses (e.g. Intertek, FIRA) with two aims: 1) to put all the test specifications into the Regulations, i.e. to remove messy crossoever links with British Standards so that the Regs are no longer hybrid and subject to industry control, 2) discuss possibilities for a new match/ignition test. Test houses als agree that the cigarette test can be dropped since any product that passes the match test automatically will pass the cigarette test. However, since then the Department has failed to implement either proposal and as of the present, does not appear to even know about it.
The European Parliament meets to discuss EU fire regs and flame retardants. They inform BIS that the European Commission is no longer prepared to continue supporting any upgrade of EU furniture fire standard (to UK levels) unless FRs are excluded.
2013
Work continues to refine the match test proposal with various experts, e.g. Prof. R Horrocks, Bolton University, Profs Richard Hull and Anna Stec at UCLAN. An informal consultation paper on a new match test, drafted by Steve Owen the Department's fire safety advisor, is circulated to a selection of expert stakeholders, covering 5 possible options. All responses are positive that a new test will reduce FRs, and option 3 (forerunner of the eventual proposal) is preferred.
Terry Edge of BIS and Steve Owen visit IKEA's research centre in Almhult, Sweden, to work more closely on the preferred option for a new match test. Their experts are strongly in favour of it; the CEO describes it as "scarily competent".
Practical research on the new test is undertaken by Steve Owen at Intertek, repeated by FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association), demonstrating that the new test will indeed reduce FRs by around 50% in cover fabrics.
BIS officials' submission to Minister Jo Swinson offers four options – do nothing, revoke, full review (but not possible before next election), and bring forward match test. The Minister agrees with officials' recommendation for the last of these. The focus therefore fully switches to starting the review with a new match/cig test with the intention to cover the rest of the FFRs shortly after its implementation. Industry says it would prefer a full review to be done at once but concedes the Department's point that implementing the new match test first will bring early savings and urgently needed improvements to ignition safety.
2014
A second discussion paper based around a refined option 3 is circulated to around 200 stakeholders. Their feedback is used in the development of the formal consultation paper.
(Jan – Aug 2014): BIS hosts or attends 27 workshops with a wide range of stakeholders – retailers, trade associations, manufacturers, test houses, universities, Trading Standards, etc - to discuss and debate the proposed new match test. Contrast this with the fact that the OPSS has held just one stakeholder meeting to discuss its proposals for new regs over the past five years and that was only a short virtual meeting at which stakeholders were blocked from joining or even commenting.
(Aug 2014): Consultation launched. Essentially, it proposes a new match ignition test that will be effective, while at the same time setting out in detail why the current match test is not (and therefore why the regulations overall are not), and how it will save industry around £50m a year chiefly through reducing flame retardants in cover fabrics by around 50%. It also contains links to numerous studies of the environmental and health damage caused by flame retardants. The plan is to implement the changes in April 2015.
(Oct 2014): Consultation closes with 113 responses; many are positive. Negative responses do not present any evidence or facts or logic for why the proposals would not be effective. They are all from industries that will lose out financially, as was expected.
The following six months saw a division appear in the BIS team. The BIS expert, Terry Edge and the Department's technical adviser, Steve Owen, informed the Minister that all the work was done, the consultation returns did not present any problems – a view backed by BIS's own Deregulation Unit. However, for unexplained reasons, Terry's senior management – Bridget Micklem, Phil Earl and Chris Knox insisted that more work needed to be done but without ever stipulating what that actually constituted. For the official Government Response to the Consultation, Terry was asked to draft it along with the Ministerial Submission paper – which was normal. However, Phil Earl then actually re-drafted the Submission and in a totally unprecedented and illicit manner, presented the Minister with two draft Responses – Terry and his – and asked her to choose between them. To help her decide he broke all government rules by informing her that Terry was currently conducting a Civil Service Code Case against his managers (meant to be kept confidential), i.e. clearly indicating that if she chose Terry's response, she would be in trouble with all of his senior managers, including the Permanent Secretary. She chose Earl's response. At some future date, I will publish a detailed account of these few months.
2015
(Mar 2015): BIS publishes its official Response to the consultation. The difference between this (Earl's) Response and Terry's is that while the latter answered every question raised by respondents, the former answered none of them, opting instead for graphs based on opinion only. It also talked about how it had been agreed to do more work with the British Standards Institute, which was untrue since BIS itself rejected the suggestion when it was put to them, but was an important time-wasting tactic favoured by industry and BIS senior managers. It concluded thus (Terry's emphasis):
“The aim of this [consulting British Standards further on the new match test] 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.”
Hence, this Next Step is still operative and therefore contradicts the fact that BIS launched two further consultations on the same subject, in 2016 and 2023. It is perhaps needless to say that no changes to the full Regulations nor a full review have never been undertaken.
2015-2016
The disagreement in the BIS team continues but overall no more work at all is undertaken on the Regulations.
(Oct 2015): Bridget Micklem and Phil Earl had consistently taken the line that the new match test would not be going ahead in April 2016 (as BIS had announced), because more work needed to be done on it. However, in a team meeting in late October BM suddenly announces that the aim is in fact to now go for April 2016. She gives no reason for this and PE is clearly surprised by it. However –
(Nov-Dec 2015): BM and PE meet the new Minister, Anna Soubry (the first time she’d been briefed about the new match test months into her spell). She agrees to go for match test implementation in April 2016. This means the European Commission will need to be notified by early December. Minister's Private Office expects a timely follow up in the form of a written submission (in the next few days). But the Minister is not sent the formal submission until six weeks after the face-to-face meeting and way past the deadline for April 2016 implementation. The submission is also 15 pages long and differs from the verbal agreement with the Minister in several ways. In other words, Terry's managers have taken another U-turn, back to their previous delaying tactics. It recommends including the new match test with some other amendments (implying this will be all the amendments when in fact that isn’t true), which means another consultation will be necessary (around ‘spring’ next year). It also recommends two changes to the match test which have been put together by BM at the last moment and are not based in any way on evidence or expert input. TE protests and is thrown out of his job. However, he’s shown the submission and a later paper written by BM in support of the new changes; he writes a detailed refutation, proving that the new changes will greatly increase the levels of flame retardants in UK furniture as well as raise industry’s costs by up to around £270m per year. BM answers by saying that she will not respond further because TE is no longer in the job!
2016
(Jan 2016): Phil Earl circulates stakeholders thus:
"I realise that it has been a while since we contacted you about the ongoing work on the FFRs. I apologise for the delay, and here is an update on progress to date.
"We have now had discussions with the Minister and presented the outcomes from our two stakeholder meetings and the BSI FW6 meeting [this is completely untrue]. The Minister would like us to continue working with you on making changes to the current regulations [untrue] and we will be resuming those discussions soon, based on specific proposals which we believe reflect the feedback we have received to date, with the aim of completing the policy review by April 2016 as originally envisaged [see above: this is also untrue; the Minister agreed to implement the new match test by April 2016]. Our expectation is that we will formally consult on the proposals after Easter [this is also misleading: stakeholders had been pressing for change and BIS lawyers informed the team that another consultation was notnecessary, because essentially stakeholders had already been consulted]. In this context, we would like to clarify that we will not be introducing any changes to the Regulations in April 2016 [again, note that this is a decision that Earl and co made and was in contradiction to the Minister's actual decision].
"I also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know of a change within the project team. Terry Edge has now moved on from the team; we are very grateful for all the hard work and commitment he has put into the review and wish him well in his new post."
(Sept 2016): Against their own lawyers' advice the Department goes out to consultation again, not explaining why it has not completed the 2014 consultation Next Steps it set out previously (see above). They propose exactly the same new match test as they did in 2014. Despite more urging from stakeholders, they do not respond to this consultation until 2019 (recommended government response time is 3 months) and only then because they are forced to do so by the cross-party parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee who conclude that the regulations are not effective and should be changed immediately, brought into line with the rest of the world, i.e. drop the match and fillings tests and retain just the cigarette test which would lead to a complete removal of flame retardants from UK furniture. However, the EAC is dismayed when the Department's response says in effect that they are going to consult yet again on the regs. As of January 2025, over a year from yet another consultation, no amendments have been made – eleven years after the Department itself proved they are not effective and therefore that the high level of flame retardants in UK furniture are completely unnecessary (but highly profitable).
Since then absolutely no changes at all have been made to the FFRs.
In 2019 an all-party parliamentary committee – the Environmental Audit Committee – concluded its inquiry into these regulations by agreeing that they are ineffective and recommending the government change them immediately. Instead, the government went out to consultation yet again, although what they were actually proposing was unclear to everyone. And they were now claiming that in fact the current regulations areeffective but without offering any evidence, facts or logic to justify taking a U-turn on their previous findings.
On the face of it, this is unbelievable. Therefore I thought it might be useful to set out a timeline in support of the above statement. Apart from where I am obviously speculating, all the events listed below are taken from official documents; from the horse's mouth so to speak. The fact that the Department doesn't any longer have any copies of most of these documents is, well, another story. It's certainly convenient for them.
1988
The regs are implemented after a somewhat rushed creation. A few minor amendments are necessary in 1989. Despite being a recognised barrier to EU trade, the UK government claimed the Commission approved them as national regs because the UK proved it had a furniture fire safety case to answer (there is no evidence of this on file, however, and it makes little sense since furniture is similar across Europe).
2004
Industry and other stakeholders had been pressing the government to amend the regs. DTI (Department for Trade and Industry) officials were reluctant but Minister Melanie Johnson finally agreed and asked industry to present her with possible amendments. They did so, submitting 21 suggestions, all of which were valid. But Johnson reneged, claiming that only enforcement needed looking at and passing the buck to Trading Standards. Internally, officials believed that amending the FFRs would give the EC the opportunity to challenge them (further suggesting that it did not approve of them originally, either). These suggestions remain outstanding to the present day as the Regulations have not been amended since 1989 (apart from a minor change in 2010 – see below).
2009
The Greenstreet Berman Statistical Report (commissioned by BIS (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – previously DTI)) is published. It concludes that the FFRs are still required and are saving around 54 lives per year. These estimates are based, however, on the assumption that the FFRs worked (even so, it's never been possible to say how many lives are saved, only by how much the number of fire deaths has reduced); in 2014 it's revealed by the Department that the regs are actually ineffective therefore the GB report is invalidated. To the present day, however, it's still cited by industry as proof the regs are working/needed.
2010
BIS hosts 4 meetings of a FFRs Stakeholder Advisory Group (around 38 people) to advise the Minister of the best way forward with the Regs. Three options are workshopped: Revoke, Do Nothing, Amend. There is unanimous agreement to Amend, and Minister Ed Davey gives approval to that end (and to make an early, minor, amendment as a separate issue – see below) on the basis of estimated savings to industry, fire services, enforcement authorities of around £36m per year – mostly to fire services and Trading Standards; also to industry via better defined regulations. At this time it is believed that the Regulations work.
Industry informs BIS that due to a flaw in the original wording of the Regulations, one of the fire tests has never been legally applied. The Department convenes meetings with experts, new wording is drafted, the test is made viable, the European Commission is consulted and an amendment is issued – all within six months. This, compared with the Department finding a similar fault in the main ignition test in 2014 which remains unfixed more than ten years later. The difference being that putting right the 2010 fault did not cost industry money whereas putting right the 2014 would have cost industry many millions.
2011
BIS publishes an open letter, announcing the ‘Amend’ decision, inviting comments via informal consultation, stating that the Advisory Group will be reformed (now around 50 members) to work on three key areas – Testing, Scope and Traceability - which they then do over the following two years, gathering a large volume of expert data. This data is used to inform the 2014 consultation (see below) but has subsequently been completely ditched by the Department when it announced in 2019 that it was starting again from scratch (no reason given).
2012
BIS hosts 4 workshops with 5 leading test houses (e.g. Intertek, FIRA) with two aims: 1) to put all the test specifications into the Regulations, i.e. to remove messy crossoever links with British Standards so that the Regs are no longer hybrid and subject to industry control, 2) discuss possibilities for a new match/ignition test. Test houses als agree that the cigarette test can be dropped since any product that passes the match test automatically will pass the cigarette test. However, since then the Department has failed to implement either proposal and as of the present, does not appear to even know about it.
The European Parliament meets to discuss EU fire regs and flame retardants. They inform BIS that the European Commission is no longer prepared to continue supporting any upgrade of EU furniture fire standard (to UK levels) unless FRs are excluded.
2013
Work continues to refine the match test proposal with various experts, e.g. Prof. R Horrocks, Bolton University, Profs Richard Hull and Anna Stec at UCLAN. An informal consultation paper on a new match test, drafted by Steve Owen the Department's fire safety advisor, is circulated to a selection of expert stakeholders, covering 5 possible options. All responses are positive that a new test will reduce FRs, and option 3 (forerunner of the eventual proposal) is preferred.
Terry Edge of BIS and Steve Owen visit IKEA's research centre in Almhult, Sweden, to work more closely on the preferred option for a new match test. Their experts are strongly in favour of it; the CEO describes it as "scarily competent".
Practical research on the new test is undertaken by Steve Owen at Intertek, repeated by FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association), demonstrating that the new test will indeed reduce FRs by around 50% in cover fabrics.
BIS officials' submission to Minister Jo Swinson offers four options – do nothing, revoke, full review (but not possible before next election), and bring forward match test. The Minister agrees with officials' recommendation for the last of these. The focus therefore fully switches to starting the review with a new match/cig test with the intention to cover the rest of the FFRs shortly after its implementation. Industry says it would prefer a full review to be done at once but concedes the Department's point that implementing the new match test first will bring early savings and urgently needed improvements to ignition safety.
2014
A second discussion paper based around a refined option 3 is circulated to around 200 stakeholders. Their feedback is used in the development of the formal consultation paper.
(Jan – Aug 2014): BIS hosts or attends 27 workshops with a wide range of stakeholders – retailers, trade associations, manufacturers, test houses, universities, Trading Standards, etc - to discuss and debate the proposed new match test. Contrast this with the fact that the OPSS has held just one stakeholder meeting to discuss its proposals for new regs over the past five years and that was only a short virtual meeting at which stakeholders were blocked from joining or even commenting.
(Aug 2014): Consultation launched. Essentially, it proposes a new match ignition test that will be effective, while at the same time setting out in detail why the current match test is not (and therefore why the regulations overall are not), and how it will save industry around £50m a year chiefly through reducing flame retardants in cover fabrics by around 50%. It also contains links to numerous studies of the environmental and health damage caused by flame retardants. The plan is to implement the changes in April 2015.
(Oct 2014): Consultation closes with 113 responses; many are positive. Negative responses do not present any evidence or facts or logic for why the proposals would not be effective. They are all from industries that will lose out financially, as was expected.
The following six months saw a division appear in the BIS team. The BIS expert, Terry Edge and the Department's technical adviser, Steve Owen, informed the Minister that all the work was done, the consultation returns did not present any problems – a view backed by BIS's own Deregulation Unit. However, for unexplained reasons, Terry's senior management – Bridget Micklem, Phil Earl and Chris Knox insisted that more work needed to be done but without ever stipulating what that actually constituted. For the official Government Response to the Consultation, Terry was asked to draft it along with the Ministerial Submission paper – which was normal. However, Phil Earl then actually re-drafted the Submission and in a totally unprecedented and illicit manner, presented the Minister with two draft Responses – Terry and his – and asked her to choose between them. To help her decide he broke all government rules by informing her that Terry was currently conducting a Civil Service Code Case against his managers (meant to be kept confidential), i.e. clearly indicating that if she chose Terry's response, she would be in trouble with all of his senior managers, including the Permanent Secretary. She chose Earl's response. At some future date, I will publish a detailed account of these few months.
2015
(Mar 2015): BIS publishes its official Response to the consultation. The difference between this (Earl's) Response and Terry's is that while the latter answered every question raised by respondents, the former answered none of them, opting instead for graphs based on opinion only. It also talked about how it had been agreed to do more work with the British Standards Institute, which was untrue since BIS itself rejected the suggestion when it was put to them, but was an important time-wasting tactic favoured by industry and BIS senior managers. It concluded thus (Terry's emphasis):
“The aim of this [consulting British Standards further on the new match test] 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.”
Hence, this Next Step is still operative and therefore contradicts the fact that BIS launched two further consultations on the same subject, in 2016 and 2023. It is perhaps needless to say that no changes to the full Regulations nor a full review have never been undertaken.
2015-2016
The disagreement in the BIS team continues but overall no more work at all is undertaken on the Regulations.
(Oct 2015): Bridget Micklem and Phil Earl had consistently taken the line that the new match test would not be going ahead in April 2016 (as BIS had announced), because more work needed to be done on it. However, in a team meeting in late October BM suddenly announces that the aim is in fact to now go for April 2016. She gives no reason for this and PE is clearly surprised by it. However –
(Nov-Dec 2015): BM and PE meet the new Minister, Anna Soubry (the first time she’d been briefed about the new match test months into her spell). She agrees to go for match test implementation in April 2016. This means the European Commission will need to be notified by early December. Minister's Private Office expects a timely follow up in the form of a written submission (in the next few days). But the Minister is not sent the formal submission until six weeks after the face-to-face meeting and way past the deadline for April 2016 implementation. The submission is also 15 pages long and differs from the verbal agreement with the Minister in several ways. In other words, Terry's managers have taken another U-turn, back to their previous delaying tactics. It recommends including the new match test with some other amendments (implying this will be all the amendments when in fact that isn’t true), which means another consultation will be necessary (around ‘spring’ next year). It also recommends two changes to the match test which have been put together by BM at the last moment and are not based in any way on evidence or expert input. TE protests and is thrown out of his job. However, he’s shown the submission and a later paper written by BM in support of the new changes; he writes a detailed refutation, proving that the new changes will greatly increase the levels of flame retardants in UK furniture as well as raise industry’s costs by up to around £270m per year. BM answers by saying that she will not respond further because TE is no longer in the job!
2016
(Jan 2016): Phil Earl circulates stakeholders thus:
"I realise that it has been a while since we contacted you about the ongoing work on the FFRs. I apologise for the delay, and here is an update on progress to date.
"We have now had discussions with the Minister and presented the outcomes from our two stakeholder meetings and the BSI FW6 meeting [this is completely untrue]. The Minister would like us to continue working with you on making changes to the current regulations [untrue] and we will be resuming those discussions soon, based on specific proposals which we believe reflect the feedback we have received to date, with the aim of completing the policy review by April 2016 as originally envisaged [see above: this is also untrue; the Minister agreed to implement the new match test by April 2016]. Our expectation is that we will formally consult on the proposals after Easter [this is also misleading: stakeholders had been pressing for change and BIS lawyers informed the team that another consultation was notnecessary, because essentially stakeholders had already been consulted]. In this context, we would like to clarify that we will not be introducing any changes to the Regulations in April 2016 [again, note that this is a decision that Earl and co made and was in contradiction to the Minister's actual decision].
"I also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know of a change within the project team. Terry Edge has now moved on from the team; we are very grateful for all the hard work and commitment he has put into the review and wish him well in his new post."
(Sept 2016): Against their own lawyers' advice the Department goes out to consultation again, not explaining why it has not completed the 2014 consultation Next Steps it set out previously (see above). They propose exactly the same new match test as they did in 2014. Despite more urging from stakeholders, they do not respond to this consultation until 2019 (recommended government response time is 3 months) and only then because they are forced to do so by the cross-party parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee who conclude that the regulations are not effective and should be changed immediately, brought into line with the rest of the world, i.e. drop the match and fillings tests and retain just the cigarette test which would lead to a complete removal of flame retardants from UK furniture. However, the EAC is dismayed when the Department's response says in effect that they are going to consult yet again on the regs. As of January 2025, over a year from yet another consultation, no amendments have been made – eleven years after the Department itself proved they are not effective and therefore that the high level of flame retardants in UK furniture are completely unnecessary (but highly profitable).
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