Latest new and industry related posts

UKCA marking: roles and responsibilities

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 10:38:11 GMT

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If the UKCA marking applies to products you manufacture or handle, you will have specific obligations and responsibilities for compliance, depending on your role.

The government intends to extend recognition of the CE marking for placing most goods on the market in Great Britain, indefinitely, beyond December 2024. These updates apply to the 18 regulations that fall under the Department for Business and Trade (DBT). These are:

toys
pyrotechnics
recreational craft and personal watercraft
simple pressure vessels
electromagnetic compatibility
non-automatic weighing instruments
measuring instruments
measuring container bottles
lifts
equipment for potentially explosive atmospheres (ATEX)
radio equipment
pressure equipment
personal protective equipment (PPE)
gas appliances
machinery
equipment for use outdoors
aerosols
low voltage electrical equipment

There are different rules for medical devices , construction products , cableways , transportable pressure equipment , unmanned aircraft systems, rail products , marine equipment and ecodesign. The relevant departments covering these sectors either have communicated, or will communicate, plans in due course.

For more information and to read the UK Governments instructions at their original source please click here.

The Queen's Funeral

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 22:20:15 GMT

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The Queen's Funeral Plans

The monarch will be laid to rest with her late husband during a private service and burial on Monday evening, following her state funeral at Westminster Abbey.

Further details about the Queen's funeral on Monday have been announced, including confirmation that she will be buried with the Duke of Edinburgh.

The monarch will be laid to rest with her late husband Prince Philip at the King George VI memorial chapel during a private service and burial on Monday evening.

This will follow her state funeral at Westminster Abbey, which begins at 11am.

For more information and to read the full article at its original source please click here to go to Sky News.

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Certification, UKCA & CE Marking

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 18:37:20 GMT

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CE Marking of Construction Products

The Construction Product Regulation No. 305/2011/EC requires construction products to be CE marked based on requirements of relevant technical specifications (harmonized EN standards or European Technical Assessments (based on European Assessment document). In relationship to the Assessment and Verification of Constancy of Performance (AVCP), the manufacturer will have to work with a Notified Certification Body and/or a Notified Laboratory.

The tasks of the AVCP systems defined in the Delegated Regulation No. 568/2014 are as follow:

Efectis is Notified Certification Body (Notified Body No. 1812 for France and No. 2184 for Turkey), Notified Laboratory (for France 1812, Nederland 1234, Turkey 2184 and UK 2822) also notified for fire testing under horizontal notifications for the application of the Construction Product Regulation No. 305/2011/EC for the products: smoke exhaust systems, building glass, fire protective products, fire dampers, insulation products, etc. See NANDO ( France , Netherlands , Turkey ).

Efectis, with three strong competencies: testing, inspection and certification, provides the certification services based on evaluations (testing and inspections) performed by Efectis entities/teams or on the request of manufacturers (and subject to approval) based on testing performed by other notified and/or accredited laboratories.

The Certification section of Efectis has been issuing CE marking certificates of construction products for manufacturers in the European Union and abroad for more than 17 years. The Certification team is also largely involved in the work of the European Group of Notified Bodies:

Advisory group of Notified Body (AG-GNB) : Efectis insured the Presidence until end of 2018
Horizontal sector group for Fire (SH02)
Sector group 07 (SG07 fixed firefighting systems: Efectis leader of the WG smoke exhaust systems)
Sector group 09: Building glass and other sector groups in relationship with Efectis Notifications
Sector group 22 (SG22) for cables : Efectis insured the animation of the group

This information was taken from the Efectis website, to see the original source please click here.

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Government to protect leaseholders with new laws to make industry pay for building safety

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 10:43:20 GMT

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Government to protect leaseholders with new laws to make industry pay for building safety

Tough new measures that will force industry to pay to remove cladding and protect leaseholders from exorbitant costs have been unveiled by Secretary of State for

Levelling Up Michael Gove.

To read more and see this article in its original source please click here.

Roof Vent Products

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 13:14:48 GMT

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Fireflow products carry a descriptive CE label and a Declaration of performance (DoP) provided.

Fireflow NSHEV products are CE marked and certified in accordance with BS EN12101-2 2003, it has a Re:1000 Reliability classification that is suitable for use in combined smoke control and environmental systems.

Our family of Fireflow NSHEV products:

Supreme, Classic and Smokelite140 are all CE marked products and fully certified in accordance with BS EN12101-2 with a reliability RE1000 classification that is suitable for use in combined smoke controls and environmental systems. NSHEV Compatible panels and other specific control modules can be supplied to the M&E Contractors requirements.

If you would like to discuss any of our products and their appropriate uses please feel free to call us we would love to hear from you.

Gove to vow to pursue cladding problem firms

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 12:03:57 GMT

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On Monday, he will pledge to ease the "unfair burden" placed on leaseholders by issues exposed by the Grenfell fire.

He will set out measures aimed at forcing developers to pay for cladding removal from lower-height buildings, telling them "we are coming for you".

Changes to make it easier for owners to sell their homes will also be unveiled.

BBC Newsnight revealed on Friday that those who live in buildings between 11 and 18.5 metres high will not have to pay for the removal of dangerous cladding under the plans devised by Mr Gove.

In place of loans taken out by leaseholders, the government will attempt to secure up to £4bn from developers towards the costs.

In a statement to MPs on Monday, Mr Gove will say taxpayers should not be forced to cough up more money to pay for building defects like the removal of cladding.

He will set up a roundtable with developers to allow them to "do the right thing" before Easter but if that does not lead to a solution, Mr Gove will promise to "impose a solution upon them in law".

Labour said the reported proposals were "less significant than they sound" and called for leaseholders to be "fully protected in law from the costs of fixing all historic defects".

In the wake of the Grenfell fire, which killed 72 people in 2017, flammable cladding and other fire safety defects were discovered in hundreds of blocks of flats across the UK.

Removing cladding can cost millions of pounds per block, with the cost in lower-height buildings often being borne by individual flat owners, under the leasehold system in England and Wales.

The government had already promised to pay to remove cladding in taller buildings.

But hundreds of thousands of people are still living in dangerous blocks more than four years on from Grenfell - while many flat owners have been left with spiralling insurance costs, service charges, and requirements for expensive 24-hour "waking watch" patrols in case of fire.

Others have been left unable to insure or remortgage their homes.

Firms will be threatened with legislation if they do not pick up the bill for safety issues uncovered since Grenfell and a dedicated team will be set up to pursue companies over defects.

"Those who profited and continue to profit from the sale of unsafe buildings and construction products must take full responsibility for their actions and pay to put things right," Mr Gove is expected to say.

Further government proposals aimed at fixing a "broken" building safety system include:

New advice for assessing property safety and scrapping the "wrongly interpreted" consolidated advice notice
A pledge that no leaseholder in a building above 11m will ever face any costs for fixing dangerous cladding
A £27m fund to pay for fire alarms and sprinklers to end so-called waking watches

Statutory legal protections for leaseholders will be introduced and Mr Gove will pledge "nothing will be off the table".

He will declare medium sized buildings are safe unless there is evidence to the contrary and pledge to restore a more "common sense" approach to assessing building safety.

The consolidated advice notice - which many have complained makes it difficult to sell homes unless they can prove a perfect bill of health - is being withdrawn immediately.

Mr Gove will say the notices which the current government introduced, have been wrongly interpreted and and go beyond "what is necessary".

New guidance for assessors will be published in the coming days.

For more information or to read this article in full at its original source on the BBC News website please click here.

Gove says ‘cowboys’ should pay to fix fire safety problems

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 14:18:30 GMT

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Gove says ‘cowboys’ should pay to fix fire safety problems

9 NOVEMBER 2021

BY WILL ING

New Paragraph

Housing secretary Michael Gove has said he is ‘unhappy with the principles’ of leaseholders paying for fire safety remediation costs – and suggested that ‘cowboy’ developers and manufacturers should cough up.

Speaking at the Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee yesterday, Gove distanced himself from his predecessor Robert Jenrick’s approach to the cladding crisis – saying that he has taken a ‘couple of steps back’ from the proposed loan scheme for leaseholders.

‘No matter how effective a scheme might be in capping [leaseholder] costs, my prior question is: “Why do they have to pay at all?”,’ he said.

He added he was seeking to amend the Building Safety Bill to embed a ‘polluter pays’ approach to fire safety problems.

‘The Grenfell inquiry has uncovered examples of tests of the safety of a product being manipulated in order to evade responsibility’

But Gove said that, while central and local government had made mistakes in poorly regulating fire safety, they were not to blame for fire safety problems. ‘It would seem to me that developers and construction product manufacturers, if they say they are squeaky clean, are wrong,’ he said.

‘The sheriffs might not have been on the ball, but the cowboys were behaving like cowboys

in an unregulated way.

To read this article in full and on its original source website please click here

BREXIT and UKCA update - January 2021

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 20:36:07 GMT

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Trading within the UK and between the UK and Europe just got a lot more complicated

Despite the trade deal between the UK and the EU being hailed as a major success for both sides, the main benefits of the agreement focus on the elimination of trading tariffs and the equalisation of customs rules. So far as the single market (and hence the rules for CE marking) are concerned, the UK is now split up into two parts: Northern Ireland remains within the single market while Great Britain (i.e. Scotland, Wales and England) leaves the single market and is free to set its own rules.

This is what we know so far:

From 1 January 2021, the UKCA mark will start to replace the CE mark for goods sold within Great Britain.
The CE mark will continue to be required for goods sold in Northern Ireland.
Units already in the supply chain at the time the new rules come into effect can continue to be sold under the old rules.
For most CE marked goods there will be a one year transition period commencing on 1 January 2021, during which time the CE marking will continue to be acceptable as an alternative to the UKCA mark for goods sold in Great Britain.
Some goods (e.g. certain medical devices) will have an extended transition period up to 2023.
For all other goods, the UKCA mark will become mandatory at the end of 2021.
Products will be able to display both the UKCA mark and the CE logo unless and until the rules for those products diverge between the UK and EU.
It's not expected that any divergence will happen in the near future.
Products which require third party (i.e Notified Body) involvement as part of their CE marking process will have to use a UK Approved Body instead of (or as well as) an EU Notified Body - see below for more details.
Manufacturers based within Great Britain will need to identify a representative based within the EU whose name and address can go on the product as a contact point for the Market Surveillance Authorities.
Manufacturers based outside the UK and selling in the UK will need a UK based representative.

The UKCA Mark

The UKCA mark is the replacement for CE marking in Great Britain. Applying the UKCA mark is exactly like using the CE logo. The Regulations and Directives which created the legal structure for CE marking have now been adopted into UK law and updated to change the terminology and to bring them completely within the control of the UK government.

The following table summarises the terminology equivalence:

New To apply the UKCA mark, manufacturers have to do exactly the same things as they did to apply the CE mark, and in most cases they can use the same standards, risk assessments, test data, and technical files so the only thing which changes is the logo on the product and the words on the Declaration of Conformity.

Products being sold in the EU as well as Great Britain will continue to need the CE logo, so it's likely that most products will have both the UKCA mark and the CE logo on them.

Standards

Those familiar with CE marking will know that the key to the process is the correct application of standards to provide detailed design guidance and recommended solutions for complying with the safety requirements of the CE Directives and Regulations.

Standards will continue to form the bedrock of the product safety landscape in the UK after Brexit . The UK Government will publish lists of 'designated standards ' which can be used as the basis of conformity with the UKCA requirements, in exactly the same way as harmonised standards provide a presumption of conformity for CE marking.

Standards will continue to be published in the UK by the British Standards Institute . BSI remains a member of CEN and CENELEC until at least the end of 2021, but only as an EEA member, not as a full EU member. This means BSI's influence on the drafting of harmonised standards is diminished.

It's not currently clear what happens to the UK's obligation to withdraw conflicting national standards and replace them with harmonised standards once BSI is no longer a full member of CEN or CENELEC. The obligation is part of the CEN/CENELEC agreement which national standards bodies must sign up to if they are to become full members and it's probably the most significant factor in the harmonisation of products for sale across the single market. However, it's difficult to see how the commitment to withdraw conflicting national standards is compatible with the full national sovereignty aspect of Brexit . The new UK-EU agreement includes words which indicate that the UK will focus on standardisation at an 'international' level but quite what that means in practice remains to be seen.

Notified Bodies, Approved Bodies

Notified Bodies have an important role to play in the CE marking of many products. The Notified Body may be involved in type testing the design or in ensuring the consistency of production (quality control), or both. Where the Notified Body is involved in checking the conformity of production, their four figure number must accompany the CE logo on the product.

Notified Bodies must be located in an EU Member State, or in a territory where there is a mutual recognition agreement (MRA) between that territory's government and the EU. There is (currently, at least) no such MRA between the UK and the EU, so all Notified Bodies based in the UK ceased to be notified on 31 December 2020 .

Most UK based Notified Bodies have now opened offices in European states and have had these appointed as EU Notified Bodies by the EU country where they are based so they can continue to provide Notified Body services in the CE marking field to their clients.

The UK Government has now appointed all the UK based Notified Bodies who requested transfer as UK Approved Bodies. They retain their four figure EU Notified Body number which must go on products alongside the UKCA mark if required by the relevant regulations for that type of product. Approved Bodies can only approve products which are UKCA marked and intended for sale within Great Britain, and EU Notified Bodies can only approve products for CE marking, so a manufacturer who wishes to sell both in the EU and in the UK must appoint both a UK Approved Body and an EU Notified Body. In practice, in most cases this can be the same organisation so long as it has a commercial presence and accreditation in the UK as well as Europe.

The situation in Northern Ireland is even more complicated because the UK government has guaranteed equivalence between the Northern Irish market and the rest of the UK, even though the CE mark remains mandatory in Northern Ireland. Because a UK Approved Body cannot normally approve goods for CE marking, manufacturers based in Northern Ireland would need to engage the services of a Notified Body from elsewhere in Europe. This would put manufacturers based in Northern Ireland at a disadvantage in comparison with their GB based competitors, so the Northern Ireland Protocol permits a manufacturer based in Northern Ireland to CE mark their products on the basis of certification from a UK Approved Body, but the CE mark on such products must be accompanied by a new logo - the 'UKNI' marking. Products bearing the UKNI mark can be freely traded within the UK but they cannot be sold in the EU, despite them carrying the CE logo.

The following table summarises the situation, and our UKCA FAQ also has more information.

New Authorised Representatives

The UK is no longer part of the EU and the transitional arrangements have expired. This means that any requirement in the CE marking legislation which mandates a presence within the EU can no longer be fulfilled by a UK based office.

Such requirements include the need to identify an Authorised Representative for medical devices , the requirement for an address within Europe for the 'person authorised to compile the technical file' for machinery and the need to identify an EU importer for most of the other CE marking directives and regulations .

This means that manufacturers based outside the EU will need to come to an arrangement with someone who can fulfil this obligation from 1 January 2021. Furthermore, manufacturers based outside the UK who wish to sell products into the UK market will also need a representative within the UK. This is covered in much more detail on our Authorised Representative page , along with further information about new obligations under the Market Surveillance Regulation that come into force in July 2021.

In summary...

Here are the most important points to take away:

Don't panic! For most products manufacturers still have until the end of 2021 to get themselves organised to apply the UKCA mark.
For the moment, the technical requirements for the UK and EU markets remain identical, it is only some of the administrative paperwork which changes.
Manufacturers selling within the EU will need to ensure they have representation in the EU, and manufacturers selling within the UK must have representation within the UK.

As ever, Conformance is here to help you get to grips with these changes. Contact us if you need help.

Please click here to see the original source of the article.

MPs reject move to shield residents from fire safety costs

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 07:18:35 GMT

MPs reject move to shield residents from fire safety costs

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(This image is for illustrative purposes only.)

MPs have rejected a move to give more protections to leaseholders and tenants in England from footing the bill for fire safety work on buildings.

They opposed an attempt by peers to force the government to stump up the cash and recover it from developers. Ministers said the proposal was unworkable and would lead to further delays in making buildings safe.

Labour said the government had broken its promises and "it is blameless people who will pay the price".

The Fire Safety Bill was brought forward to strengthen regulations following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 which killed 72 people.

Inspections on other flats after the tragedy found many were covered in combustible cladding. Thousands of leaseholders have since faced large bills for safety improvements, such as changes to emergency exits.

There has been an intense debate about who should pay for new fire prevention measures - with 30 Conservative backbenchers supporting a failed move in February to shield leaseholders from the costs.

On Monday night, MPs voted by a majority of 69 to remove a Lords amendment that would have made developers, construction firms and manufacturers responsible, with the government paying the costs upfront and then recouping them.

The housing minister, Chris Pincher, told the House the government could not support the proposal, because it was "unworkable and impractical".

"They will make legislation less clear, they do not reflect the complexity involved in apportioning liability for remedial defects," he said.

'Morally unacceptable'

In February, the government announced it was putting £3.5bn towards removing unsafe cladding from buildings more than 18m high - on top of £1.6bn for cladding removal announced last year.

It said flat owners in lower-rise blocks would be able to access loans to cover repair work and repayments would be capped at £50 a month.

But flat owners say they still face costs of up to £50,000 for other works and insurance premiums.

Speaking before the vote, Conservative MP Royston Smith said leaseholders were facing bills of thousands of pounds for something that was not their fault.

He told the Commons: "In my hand this evening I have an invoice, it's an invoice for service charges and remediation of fire safety defects, it is an invoice for nearly £79,000.

"Imagine for one moment you're trapped in a flat you've been told is unsafe.

"Night after night you go to bed with the fear of fire. You can't sell your flat because it's worthless.

"If this bill becomes law, we will be abandoning hundreds of thousands of innocent people and I'm not going to have that on my conscience."

'Heavy toll'

Another Conservative MP, Stephen McPartland, said it was "morally unacceptable" not to shield leaseholders from the cost and stress of problems that were not their fault.

"Interim costs at the moment are bankrupting leaseholders up and down the country," he said, adding: "Leaseholders are screaming for help, they are screaming in pain and what are we doing?

"Today we are saying to them thanks for paying the interim costs, once you've finished that we're now going to load you up with remediation costs on top.

"Tens of thousands of pounds that people just don't have the funds for."

The shadow home office minister, Sarah Jones, said the plight of people living in shared ownership accommodation was "dire".

Thousands were facing bankruptcy she warned with a "heavy toll on mental health".

Speaking after the vote she said: "This was another chance for the government to allow people up and down the country to sleep at night knowing they would be protected in law from fire safety costs they did not cause. "Instead, the government has once again broken its promise to protect leaseholders, and it is blameless people who will pay the price."

A government spokesperson said: "Our approach to fire safety is based on longstanding independent expert advice and evidence - which shows higher buildings have a higher risk and this is recognised globally.

"We've rightly focussed on buildings over 18m with unsafe cladding and we're spending billions of pounds to make people's homes safer. "We support the intention to protect leaseholders from remediation costs but disagree that the Fire Safety Bill is the right vehicle to address this issue."

To read the original source of this post, please click here which will take you to the BBC New website.

UK Vaccine Update

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 11:40:55 GMT

Covid-19: Novavax vaccine shows 89% efficacy in UK

A new coronavirus vaccine has been shown to be 89% effective in large-scale UK trials.

The Novavax jab is the first to show in trials that it is effective against the new virus variant found in the UK, the BBC's medical editor Fergus Walsh said.

The UK has secured 60 million doses of the jab, which will be made in Stockton-on-Tees in north-east England. Meanwhile, a single-dose vaccine developed by Janssen is 66% effective , trial results have shown.

Janssen, a company owned by Johnson & Johnson, is also investigating whether giving two doses will give either stronger or longer-lasting protection.

The company said its initial findings showed one dose prevented 85% of severe cases.

Both the Novavax and Janssen jabs will need to be reviewed by regulators before they can be used.

The PM welcomed the "good news", with doses of the Novavax jab expected to be delivered in the second half of this year if approved for use by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the government said.

The UK has so far approved three coronavirus vaccines for emergency use - one from Oxford University and AstraZeneca, another by Pfizer and BioNTech, and a third from drug firm Moderna.

The Novavax jab, which is given in two doses, was shown to be 89.3% effective at preventing Covid-19 in participants in its Phase 3 clinical trial in the UK, and around 86% effective at protecting against the new UK variant. The jab's efficacy against the original Covid-19 strain was calculated to be 95.6% .

The Phase 3 trials - the final stage before a vaccine is looked at by a regulator - enrolled more than 15,000 people aged between 18-84, of whom 27% were older than 65, US firm Novavax said.

In the South African part of the trial, where most of the cases were the South African variant of the virus, the vaccine was 60% effective among those without HIV.

Stan Erck, chief executive of Novavax, said the results from the UK trial were "spectacular" and "as good as we could have hoped", while the efficacy in South Africa was "above people's expectations".

He told the BBC the manufacturing plant in Stockton-on-Tees should be up and running by March or April, with the company hoping to get approval for the vaccine from the MHRA around the same time.

To find out more information and to read the original source of this post, please click here which will take you to the BBC's website.

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Brexit: A new era for the UK has begun

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 23:34:47 GMT

A new era has begun for the United Kingdom after it completed its formal separation from the European Union.

The UK stopped following EU rules at 23:00 GMT, as replacement arrangements for travel, trade, immigration and security co-operation came into force.

Boris Johnson said the UK had "freedom in our hands" and the ability to do things "differently and better" now the long Brexit process was over.

To read the article in full, please click here to go to the BBC website.

Brexit and UKAS Accreditation

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 15:00:07 GMT

Brexit and UKAS Accreditation

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19 November, 2020

As the end of the EU transition period draws to a close, we are facing a new era for the United Kingdom including accreditation of UK conformity assessment bodies. Although, at the time of writing negotiations are ongoing and hence there remains a number of areas where confirmation is still required, the final picture is starting to take shape.

Therefore, what are we able to say, and what will be the impact of this on UKAS accreditation? The following provides an update on the key points:

The UK’s National Accreditation Body: UKAS was formally appointed as the United Kingdom’s National Accreditation Body through the Accreditation Regulations 2009 ( SI No 3155/2009 ). This appointment will continue to be the case after 2020, with revision of the SI required in order to reflect UK rather than EU legislation.
UKAS Membership of the European cooperation for Accreditation (EA): The current membership criteria for EA requires accreditation bodies to be either an EU/EFTA member state or a candidate country (Full Membership). Other countries, e.g. those recognised under the EU Neighbourhood Policy, can become Affiliate Members although have no voting rights. As the UK is no longer a member of the EU, UKAS no longer meets the current criteria for full membership, but we have been granted a two year extension that allows us to remain a full member until the end of January 2022. It is expected that EA will revise its membership criteria, to enable UKAS to remain an active member: Further discussions are scheduled for the EA General Assembly in November. Our expectation is to be able to remain as a full member – this will be confirmed during 2021.
Mutual Recognition of UKAS Accredited Activities: UKAS is currently a signatory of regional (EA – European cooperation for Accreditation) and international (ILAC – International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation and IAF – International Accreditation Forum) mutual recognition agreements (MLAs/MRAs). Exit from the EU will not affect our signatory status to the international agreements, and will not affect our regional status as long as we remain a member of the EA. Therefore, UKAS accreditation, together with the reports and certificates of its accredited customers, will continue to benefit from international recognition (with the exception of EU-Regulatory activities – see point 4).
Recognition of UKAS accreditation across Europe The European Commission has circulated statements regarding the future validity and recognition of UKAS accreditation within the EU which have led to confusion. The oft-used text states:

The UK Accreditation Service will cease to be a national accreditation body within the meaning and for the purposes of Regulation No 765/2008 as from the end of the transition period. As a consequence, its accreditation certificates will no longer be considered as 'accreditation' within the meaning of Regulation No 765/2008 and no longer valid or recognised in the EU pursuant to that Regulation as of the end of the transition period.

The key to understanding this statement is the phrase ‘within the meaning of Regulation No 765/2008’ which means that this only relates to EU Regulations and EU schemes (e.g. EU Directives/CE Marking, EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EUETS), Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), etc) but does not include the voluntary area or any Regulatory requirements outside of the EU.

Therefore, in line with the EA and ILAC/IAF MLAs/MRAs (see point 3) the services, reports and certificates of UKAS accredited bodies, with the exception of EU Regulation and EU schemes, should continue to be recognised across the EU, EFTA and the rest of the world.

CE v UKCA Marking: The European Commission has clearly stated that as of the end of the transition period, UK Notified Bodies will lose their status as EU Notified Bodies and will be removed from the Commission's information system on notified organisations (NANDO database). As such, UK bodies will not be in a position to perform conformity assessment tasks pursuant to the European Union product legislation as of the end of the transition period.

The UK is in the process of setting up its own product marking system (UKCA Mark) with requisite conformity assessment undertaken by UK Approved Bodies. The UKCA mark shall be underpinned by UKAS accreditation, and hence bodies wishing to be appointed as Approved must hold the appropriate UKAS accreditation. UKAS continues to hold discussions regarding this with the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy with the expectation that UKAS accredited Notified Bodies shall be transferred to UK Approved Bodies on 1st January 2021 without the need for additional assessment. For further details refer to the news updates on the UKAS website.

Northern Ireland Protocol – Aspects of the NI Protocol are still under discussion, and UKAS remains in discussion with the UK Government to get clarity on the ramifications of this for UKAS and its accredited bodies. The Protocol does not allow for recognition of the UKCA Mark within Northern Ireland, instead the EU CE mark shall remain. There is provision for NI Notified Bodies to provide services relating to (UKNI) CE marked goods, although these will not be recognised within the EU. Confirmation of the final arrangements is awaited.

The information for this post was taken directly from UKAS website, click here to go to their website.

National Lockdown Guidance

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 11:20:45 GMT

New National Restrictions from 5 Nove mber resolutions.

COVID-19 case numbers are rising rapidly across the whole of the UK and in other countries. We must act now to control the spread of the virus. The single most important action we can all take to fight coronavirus is to stay at home, to protect the NHS and save lives.

When we reduce our day-to-day contact with other people, we reduce the spread of the infection. That is why, from Thursday 5 November until Wednesday 2 December, you must:

Stay at home, except for specific purposes.

Avoid meeting people you do not live with, except for specific purposes.

Close certain businesses and venues.

These new measures will reduce the growth rate of the virus, which will: prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed ensure schools, colleges and universities can stay open ensure that as many people as possible can continue to work. On Thursday 5 November these national restrictions replaced the Local Covid Alert Level measures.

The new measures will apply nationally for four weeks up to and including Wednesday 2 December. At the end of that period, we will return to a regional approach, based on the latest data.

These measures will be underpinned by law. Police and other authorities will have powers to give fines and break up gatherings.

You can help to protect your friends and family by downloading the NHS COVID-19 App to keep updated on the latest guidance from Thursday 5 November.

The information for this blog entry has been taken directly from the Government's website .

Latest new and industry related posts

UKCA marking: roles and responsibilities

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The Queen's Funeral

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Certification, UKCA & CE Marking

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Government to protect leaseholders with new laws to make industry pay for building safety

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Government to protect leaseholders with new laws to make industry pay for building safety

Roof Vent Products

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Gove to vow to pursue cladding problem firms

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Gove says ‘cowboys’ should pay to fix fire safety problems

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Gove says ‘cowboys’ should pay to fix fire safety problems

BREXIT and UKCA update - January 2021

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Trading within the UK and between the UK and Europe just got a lot more complicated

The UKCA Mark

Standards

Notified Bodies, Approved Bodies

In summary...

MPs reject move to shield residents from fire safety costs

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UK Vaccine Update

Covid-19: Novavax vaccine shows 89% efficacy in UK

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Brexit: A new era for the UK has begun

A new era has begun for the United Kingdom after it completed its formal separation from the European Union.

Brexit and UKAS Accreditation

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National Lockdown Guidance