The Labour government has confirmed the CE mark will continue to be available for construction products placed in the UK market beyond the 30 June 2025 set by the previous administration.
Building safety minister Rushanara Ali overturned today (2 September) the time limit and said the government will extend the period of recognition of CE marking for construction products. She did not specify the length of the extension.
“The CE mark will continue to be available when placing construction products on the market across the UK,” Ali said in a written ministerial statement.
“We have listened to the findings from the Independent Review of the Construction Products Testing Regime. This was clear that there is currently insufficient testing and certification capacity in the UK alone to provide the volume of conformity assessment that would be required were CE recognition to end.”
UKCA and CE markings
As part of the UK’s departure from the European Union, the Conservative government planned new rules requiring products that had previously had the CE markings (French for European conformity) to shift to the new United Kingdom Conformity Assessed (UKCA) mark to demonstrate they comply with Great Britain product safety regulations.
However, the UKCA implementation, which was originally scheduled to become mandatory on 1 January 2022, was repeatedly delayed after the industry raised concerns about the lack of specialised testing houses and capability to process imported construction products to ensure they meet UKCA marking regulations.
Although the government introduced last August an indefinite extension of the use of the CE marking in products made by UK businesses, it did not include the construction products sector.
It was also unclear whether, after the June 2025 deadline, construction products manufactured in Northern Ireland with a CE marking would be accepted in Great Britain.
Lack of testing capacity
During a Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee in January, former housing minister Lee Rowley could not confirm if his government would be able to meet the June 2025 deadline for implementing the UKCA marking scheme.
“The testing capability is not in the UK at the moment and it will be difficult to replicate it because the amount of capital that’s required to create it conceptually could be extraordinarily large,” said Rowley at the time.
“It’s making me more convinced that June [20]25 is actually a pipe dream,” replied Labour MP Kate Hollern, who had asked the minister whether the government was on track for the deadline.
Ali said that any subsequent changes to the recognition of CE marking would be subject to a minimum two-year transitional period.
Another example of how ignorant and incompetent all those responsible for Brexit were!