United Kingdom · Research & data · Issue #3 · 21/09 – 27/09
Fire leads recorded harms in UK product-safety notifications, with important data limits
The UK Product Safety Database recorded fire as the most frequent assigned harm among 1,416 notifications classed as unsafe or unsafe and non-compliant in 2025–26, but the official report cautions that the database is incomplete and cannot estimate the total number of unsafe products in the UK.
What the primary source says
OPSS reports 2,396 Product Safety Database notifications between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026, covering 3,368 notified products. Risk was recorded as serious for 563 notifications and high for 259, while 1,074 notifications — 45% — had no assigned risk level.
Among 1,416 notifications recorded as unsafe or unsafe and non-compliant and assigned a harm type, fire accounted for 424, or 30%. Electric shock followed with 226 and injuries with 194. The denominator matters: 980 notifications recorded only as non-compliant were excluded from this harm analysis, so 424 must not be described as 30% of all 2,396 notifications.
At product level, 2,072 of 3,368 notified products had at least one corrective action. The most frequently recorded actions were rejection at the border, destruction and removal of an online listing; actions are not mutually exclusive. OPSS says inconsistent and incomplete use of the live database means the figures cannot estimate all unsafe products in the UK or support simple year-to-year comparisons.
Why it matters
The useful distinction
The figures help show where regulators recorded activity, but they are administrative data rather than a measure of the prevalence of dangerous products in homes or on the market. The report's denominator, missing-risk data and multiple-action counting rules need to travel with any headline statistic.
This briefing is an independent summary of the evidence sources below. Context-only links are not used as factual authority. It does not establish that a product, organisation or listing is unsafe, unlawful or non-compliant beyond what the evidence reports.