If the United Kingdom leaves the EU unregulated, certificates of constancy of performance issued by British institutes lose their validity on March 30th. // VdS minimises potential damage for manufacturers with an accelerated procedure for certification based on LPCB test reports.

The British House of Commons clearly rejected the EU withdrawal agreement negotiated by its head of government in mid-January. Since then, the media have been headlining "Mega Crisis", "Economic Crisis", "Nail-biting Affair", even "Chaos without End". A very unpleasant Brexit consequence not only for the safety sector: Certifications of the constancy of performance for construction products issued by certifiers registered in the United Kingdom are very likely to very soon lose their validity. In case of an unregulated Brexit, the notification of these bodies expires on the 30th of March 2019, according to the European Commission's communication paper "The withdrawal of the United Kingdom and the EU regulations in the field of industrial products" (p.4)

Holders of such certificates will then need new documents from a body established and registered in the EU. VdS offers fast support for this urgent matter: Thanks to the long-standing partnership with the English institute LPCB, Europe's No.1 for safety can produce the EU documents within about three weeks basing on existing LPCB test reports if a VdS-Approval already exists for the construction product in question. Even without VdS-Approval, an accelerated awarding of certificates is possible in individual cases.

"An unregulated withdrawal of Great Britain from the EU is unfortunately becoming more and more probable", explains Gunnar Bellingen, Head of the VdS Laboratories for Fire Protection Technology. "From numerous discussions with our customers, we know that manufacturers around the world are working at full speed to minimise the expected damage caused by costs, additional work and, above all, loss of time. We hope to be able to alleviate the concerns of our partners with this rapid support offer."
 

Caption Brexit: With an increasingly likely unregulated Brexit, certificates of constancy of performance issued by British institutes will lose their validity on the 30th of March 2019. VdS offers affected producers an accelerated procedure for issuing certificates (pictured a test in the VdS laboratories).