The OPSS and its role in enforcing the CPR

Recent amendments to the UK Construction Product Regulations 2013 (CPRs), including those post-Brexit and the Building Safety Act 2022, emphasised the need for robust enforcement.  In this blog BWF Technical Director, Kevin Underwood discusses the pivotal role of The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) in enforcing the CPR, ensuring compliance and safety, focusing on market surveillance priorities such as fire doors and cladding.

A piece of legislation that affects virtually all manufacturers of timber windows and external doorsets is the Construction Product Regulations 2013 (S.I. 2013 1387, the CPRs).  These regulations bring into effect the European Construction Products Regulation (EU 305 2011, the CPR) and the requirement for CE and UKCA marking. The UK regulations have been amended in the last few years to allow for Brexit and the Building Safety Act 2022, and new draft regulations are expected soon that will show how the government will regulate construction products in the future.

Last year the government published its Independent Review of the Construction Products Testing Regime. This report stated, in relation to enforcement of the CPRs, that, “Enforcement has been almost totally non-existent, so that bad actors feel that they can bypass the regulations without consequence. As far as we can determine, there have been no prosecutions under the CPR since it was enacted, and only a limited number of investigations by the relevant enforcement authorities.” The report goes on to say, “without effective enforcement the market cannot function freely, fairly and safely; and it is not possible to judge how well the regulatory regime might work if it were effectively enforced.”

The Building Safety Act 2022 and the 2022 amendments to the CPRs enable the Secretary of State to have an enforcement role alongside the local weights and measures authority, i.e. Trading Standards in GB and Environmental Health in NI. In January 2021 the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) was appointed the National Regulator for Construction Products and acts for the Secretary of State in enforcing the CPRs, and the 2022/23 OPSS delivery report provides insight into the activities of the OPSS last year.

For construction products the OPSS’ primary aims were stated as being to:

• prevent construction products posing a safety risk from entering the market
• respond quickly and effectively to unsafe construction products placed on the market
• educate and inform industry, helping to influence their decision-making
• raise public confidence that construction products will perform as intended

The OPSS said that it undertook market surveillance and oversight activities and supported local authority trading standards teams in dealing with cases so that safety concerns could be identified and dealt with promptly. It enforced the regulations, including removing from the market products that posed a safety risk. It provided advice and support to industry to improve compliance, technical advice to government; and it commissioned product testing to investigate non-compliance.

Through strong collaboration with the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities (DLUHC) the OPSS became able to use the Secretary of State’s powers to enforce the CPRs. These enable OPSS to deal with non-compliant construction products within existing legislation while it continued to support DLUHC in the development of a new regulatory framework.

The OPSS said that it had,

• built capability and capacity in market surveillance, testing, engineering, regulatory practice, and enforcement.
• developed its knowledge and understanding of the sector through training, stakeholder engagement, supporting local authorities and taking regulatory action.
• launched a range of market assessment research projects and developed working relationships with key stakeholders and other regulators including the Building Safety Regulator (BSR).
• developed in-house capacity and capability for construction products regulation via product testing at our laboratories in Teddington.

The OPSS identified six market surveillance priorities to form the focus of its activity, which were:

• smoke control dampers,
• fire doors
• plywood
• cladding and insulation,
• electrical cables
• cross-laminated timber.

The OPSS used its analysis to inform the development and implementation of a range of regulatory interventions to tackle current issues while measuring its impact. For example, stakeholder concerns regarding fire doors, combined with the OPSS’ analysis, identified multiple potential issues. These issues included the adequacy of product information as well as real-world performance. To address these, the OPSS stated that in 2022/23 it had undertaken inspections of four manufacturers of UKCA-marked external fire-resisting doorsets and reviewed technical documentation. In those visits it found a consistent lack of understanding of the requirements of construction product regulations, and issues with the accuracy of both technical and commercial documents, relating to Declarations of Performance, product labelling, and supply of documentation. It also identified a number of minor non-compliances in relation to factory production control. These non-compliances were assessed as low risk and the OPSS worked with each manufacturer to bring products into compliance. However, the BWF understands that this programme is ongoing and there have since been inspections where no issues had been raised.