Look for the 'shield'

The BSIF launched its Registered Safety Supplier scheme on the 1st January this year with over one third of all UK manufacturers of PPE and safety distributor outlets joining in advance of the launch. Every company displaying the scheme "shield" will have signed a formal declaration confirming that they are only trading in "CE compliant" products and have instigated procedures in their quality manuals to ensure that appropriate checks are made on a regular basis to verify that no "rogue" products have entered their product range.

This is made more robust by these companies agreeing that their ISO 9001 certification body will audit this particular aspect when carrying out the annual quality inspections and that they will provide an extract of the inspection report to the BSIF as an independent verification that all is well.

The BSIF now hopes that its Registered Safety Supplier scheme will become even more widely used so that companies purchasing PPE and safety equipment can be confident that these products will perform as stated.