CE marking now (phasing out ?) to become Radio Equipment Directive (RE-D) what happens in UK ?

Paul Robinson:

...who will provide the UKCA stamp ?

 

"UKCA markings must only be placed on a product by you as the manufacturer or your authorised representative" https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-the-ukca-marking#when-to-use-the-ukca-marking

("Authorised representative" is there to allow an importer to apply it.)


It really is as simple as that, just as with CE marking. There's no official "stamp", it's just down to the manufacturer / importer to label the product according to the design given at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-the-ukca-marking (which is deliberately provided as download files for manufacturers / importers to use). In many cases this will involve the manufacturer / importer literally printing off sticky labels and putting them on the equipment - but of course they MUST have the underlying paperwork to back it up if challenged.


UK Customs will police imported goods to check for a label (and, if they are feeling really keen, the Declaration of Conformity) - again the same as already happened with CE. As a number of UK companies found pre-Brexit when trying to supply goods to Germany without CE marks! But for a UK manufacturer supplying the UK market there's basically no policing (that I know of) that a UKCA or CE mark is applied unless an incident occurs.


Cheers,


Andy

Andy Millar:

Not quite, generally CE directives are replaced by equivalent UKCA regulations. For EMC and LVD there's no change to start with (although of course if the UK government wanted they could now change the specific requirements for these to make the regulations tighter or looser).


So to sell in the UK you need a UKCA mark (underpinned by appropriate assessment / testing), to sell in the EU you need a CE mark (again underpinned by appropriate assessment / testing), but for now the actual technical standards are the same. And my guess is that these are unlikely to change much.


I'm no expert on RE-D, except to say this is an EU directive, I assume this is also now covered by UKCA?


There has always been a bit of a misunderstanding about certification bodies for CE marking, and no doubt this misunderstanding will carry on. Any manufacturer / supplier / importer can certify their own products (I've written and signed a fair few of them when I worked for a manufacturer), they don't even have to have been tested at a UKAS (or whichever national body applies) test house. Of course if that certification is found to be invalid there's a range of penalties that can be applied to the person / organisation that certified it. But it's always been a complaints led process - a manufacturer or importer has never had to prove anything to anybody before placing anything on the market (although customs will check for CE mark / paperwork on imported goods).

 

Basically, no change! Except that those of us who work for accredited bodies will now have to have two sets of accreditations (one for UK and one for EU), and where clients want to supply to UK and EU we'll need to supply two assessment certificates.


Q2 - no idea, but I wish these would become standardised so I didn't have to have so many of the blessed things!


Hope that helps,


Andy

   

I always understood CE stood for 'China Export' ? Certainly not CE standard from some of the trash I've seen!