Manage a product recall

These rules cover consumer products that no more specific safety law covers. Where specific law applies, such as for toys or electrical equipment, that law carries its own duty to notify, and you must meet it as well.

When you must act

You must act once you know that a product you have placed on the market or supplied poses risks to consumers that the general safety requirement rules out. You do not need proof that anyone has been hurt. It is also an offence to fail to notify when you ought to have known. Typical triggers are consumer complaints about injuries or near misses, a failed quality test, a warning from a component supplier or a call from Trading Standards.

The duty falls on producers and on distributors. A distributor must also not supply a product it knows, or as a professional should have presumed, is dangerous. The duty to notify does not apply to a second-hand antique, or to a product sold for repair or reconditioning, if you told the buyer so. It does not apply either where the risk concerns isolated circumstances or products.

Stop supplying and assess the risk

Stop supplying the product while you find out how serious the problem is, and tell your distributors to hold their stock. The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) publishes the risk assessment methodology that Trading Standards use, called PRISM. Businesses can use its spreadsheet toolkit to record the outcome of their own assessment.

Notify Trading Standards in writing

Notify your local Trading Standards service without delay. If you have a Primary Authority partnership, you can notify your Primary Authority instead. A business with no link to a UK local authority should notify OPSS, which finds the lead authority. Tell them about the risk and what you have done to prevent it. Trading Standards then records the notification on the Product Safety Database, and entries for recalls and for high or serious risk products appear on the Product Recalls and Alerts website.

Where the risk is serious, your notification must give:

• details that identify the product or batch precisely
• a full description of the risks it presents
• all the information you hold that helps to trace it
• the action you have taken to protect consumers

You must also cooperate with Trading Standards when it asks, for example by giving information or joining the corrective action. It will advise on the action to take. It must act in proportion to the risk and encourage you to act voluntarily, but it can act urgently where the risk is serious.

Choose the corrective action

Withdrawal stops a dangerous product reaching consumers, by pulling it from distribution, display and offer for sale. Recall goes further, because it gets the product back from consumers who already have it. Where consumers hold the product, the action can be new instructions, a modification, or telling them to stop using it and return it for a refund. You must contact all the consumers you know are affected, say what the problem is and tell them what to do.

BSI's code of practice on product recall and other corrective actions, PAS 7100:2022, sets out good practice. An authority's recall notice can require you to run the recall in line with an applicable code of practice.

Tell consumers and offer a remedy

Contact the buyers you can identify directly, and publish a notice where you cannot reach them, as a recall notice from an authority could require. A notice should give:

• the product name, model and batch or date codes, with photographs if they help
• the hazard and what could happen if people keep using it
• what to do, such as stop using it, and how to return it
• the remedy, whether a repair, a replacement or a refund, and how to claim it
• contact details for questions

Make the remedy free to the consumer, including the return, so that people act on the notice. A distributor must not supply recalled stock it still holds.

Keep records

Producers must be able to trace their products and learn of problems. Where it is reasonable to do so, that means:

• putting your name and address, and a product reference or batch, on the product or its packaging
• testing samples of products on the market
• investigating complaints about safety and keeping a register of them
• telling distributors what your monitoring finds

Distributors must keep the documents that show where a product came from. During a recall, keep a dated log of your contact with the authorities, your risk assessment, the notices you issued, what came back and what each customer received.

Keep the recall records for as long as a damages claim could still be brought.

Know your liability for damage

The recall does not end your civil liability for harm the product has already caused.