Free tool · Matcher
Which UK product rules apply to what you make?
Not “are you compliant”, which no tool can answer, but “which lists should you be reading”, which is a different and answerable question. The thirteen GOV.UK consolidated lists travel inside this page.
The short answer
Answer six questions about what the product is, what it plugs into, who uses it and how it is sold. The matcher returns the UK designated-standards regimes that look relevant out of thirteen, each linked to its GOV.UK list. It does not tell you that you comply — it tells you which lists to read, and it says so plainly when nothing matches.
Compliance advice for manufacturers usually arrives as either a consultancy engagement or a blog post that ends in a contact form. The lists themselves are public, free and maintained by the government, so the useful thing to publish is the map.
What this cannot do is assess conformity. That is a competent person's job and no questionnaire replaces it. What it can do is stop you reading twelve lists that have nothing to do with your product, and stop you missing the one that does.
Six questions about the product
Answer for one product, not a range. A product family with different power sources is two runs.
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What to do with the answer
- Open each list. They are the authoritative version; this page is a map to them, not a substitute.
- Check what you already cite against the standards checker. A regime being right does not mean the reference on your declaration still counts.
- Then get a competent person. Conformity assessment is not a form.
Why it says “we cannot tell”
Because the alternative is worse. A matcher that always finds something teaches you to distrust it the first time it is confidently wrong. If your product falls outside these thirteen regimes — and plenty do — the honest output is that it does, plus where to look next.
Questions people actually ask
Which UK regulations apply to my product?
It depends on what the product is, how it is powered, whether it transmits radio, who uses it and what it touches. There are thirteen UK designated-standards regimes — machinery, low voltage, EMC, radio equipment, toy safety, PPE, medical devices, construction products, cosmetics, explosives, pyrotechnics, general product safety, and conformity assessment. Several often apply at once: a mains-powered machine with Wi-Fi sits under at least three.
Does meeting a designated standard make me compliant?
Meeting one gives you presumption of conformity with the corresponding requirements — a legal shortcut, not the only route. You may demonstrate conformity another way, but then the evidence is yours to build and defend rather than inherited from the standard.
Can a questionnaire tell me if I am compliant?
No, and any that claims to should be closed. Conformity assessment is a competent person’s judgement about a specific product and its file. What a questionnaire can usefully do is narrow thirteen lists to the two or three worth reading, which is what this one does.
What if nothing matches?
Then it says so. Plenty of products sit outside these thirteen regimes and are covered instead by sector rules the designated-standards lists do not touch — food, chemicals under REACH, vehicles, and anything regulated as a service. An empty panel would look like a broken tool; a stated “we cannot tell” is an answer.
Sources
- GOV.UK designated standards — thirteen consolidated lists, 3,517 standards, ingested into
notes/standards.jsonand rebuilt bybuild-standards.mjs. Each result links back to the list it came from, where the position is authoritative. source ↗ — government publication, primary re-checked every 6 months - The six questions and the mapping from answer to regime are Noxia’s own. They are a navigation aid, not a legal test, and no part of this page is a conformity assessment. — our opinion, labelled
Checked 8 September 2026. Next scheduled check 7 March 2027. Numbers that move — leaderboards, live indices — are re-checked every 30 days; annual datasets and rules in force every six months; dated research once a year. If something here has gone stale before we got to it, tell us and we will correct it and say what changed.
The lists are free. The reading of them is the work.
If several regimes apply and the declarations are years old, that is a first-pass job with a fixed fee. Run the standards checker first — if nothing has moved, there is nothing to buy.
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