Protecting consumers from unsafe products

The OPSS should do the following: a) Use its product safety review to set out clearly its vision for what product safety regulation should look like, and a detailed plan for how to get there. It should work with BEIS and other relevant parts of government to articulate an ideal target operating model that addresses specific challenges the regime faces, including: • the respective roles of national and local regulators and the sustainability of these services; • the powers and tools that regulators will need, including to regulate products sold online effectively; • what governance arrangements will help the OPSS maximise its effectiveness; and • the impacts of EU Exit on the regime.

b) Speed up efforts to ensure it has the data and intelligence it needs to identify and prioritise areas of most risk to consumers. It has made progress in understanding barriers to getting good data, but now needs to establish in detail what specific data and information it requires to achieve its aims and how it will collect and analyse these data.

c) Establish which consumers may be particularly vulnerable to unsafe products, and in what circumstances. To achieve this, it could work with and learn from the experiences of other regulators that have articulated their interpretations of vulnerable consumers.

d) Work with local Trading Standards services to improve coordination between local and national regulation. It should engage with local services to understand what is and is not working in practice and consider how to get better data on local regulatory activity across the UK. It should explore what lessons it can learn on proportionate data gathering from other regulators that work with local regulation, such as the Food Standards Agency and Gambling Commission.

e) Examine how best to influence businesses and consumers to prevent problems from occurring. This could include business segmentation analysis to ensure regulators can influence harder-to-reach businesses and assessing what impact the OPSS could have by more directly trying to raise consumer awareness and understanding.

f) Build on its work so far to ensure it has a meaningful way to measure performance and impact. In addition to identifying key performance indicators, it should link indicators clearly to its strategic objectives, identify appropriate success measures, and continue to improve its understanding of how product safety regulation leads to better outcomes.