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Safety at Christmas
1st October 2007
From faulty fairy lights to overloaded sockets, the festive season often brings an increased risk of electrical accidents and fires in the home.
In recent years, there has been an increase in complaints to Trading Standards about potentially unsafe Christmas lighting products, some resulting in public recall notices or the voluntary withdrawal of products by high street retailers.
This indicates to the Council that responsible retailers, when advised of possible dangers, fully recognise the risks associated with faulty electrical products and are willing to take the necessary action to put the safety of their customers first.
However, there are always cases where the authorities have to take immediate enforcement action to safeguard consumers by ordering a sales ban or the withdrawal of potentially lethal products from the market.
Following the testing of a selection of indoor Christmas lighting products last year, we received positive responses from all the retailers we alerted about potential safety issues found with some of the products they were selling.
Many thanked us for bringing the safety issues to their attention, and confirmed that corrective action had been taken to help ensure that only products complying with the relevant safety standards would be offered to their customers in future.
In light of this success, and in support of this year’s ‘Keep Britain safe at Christmas’ campaign, we intend to continue with our seasonal product testing programme - this time focusing on outdoor Christmas lighting products.
We believe that our work in this area will not only help to raise consumer awareness of the potential safety issues when buying electrical products, but also encourage best practice amongst manufacturers and suppliers who place electrical products on the market.
But festive lighting is not the only possible additional source of danger at Christmas time. Extension leads and adaptors used to provide extra power points for all the new electrical gadgets are another area of increased risk. They not only have the potential to overload the wiring, but can also be a tripping hazard.
We recommend that householders try to minimize the use of extension leads and multi-way socket adapters, and to turn off festive lighting and other electrical equipment when not being used.
We further recommend that, before reusing them, householders carefully check any Christmas lighting products they put away last year, and to replace them if they show any signs of damage or deterioration.
Finally, we recommend that all decorative lighting products are kept out of the reach of young children.
