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. All 39 product areas GOV.UK publishes designated standards for are mapped here.
Runs in your browser Nothing is sent anywhere Checked 24 September 2026
Seven questions about the product
Answer for one product, not a range. A product family with different power sources is two runs.
The short answer
Answer seven 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 areas that look relevant, out of the 39 GOV.UK publishes, each linked to its GOV.UK page, with a count of standards for the thirteen lists this site carries. 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 lists that have nothing to do with your product, and stop you missing the one that does.
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. The checker reads the thirteen lists this site carries; for the other 26, the list itself is the check.
- 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 all 39 product areas (and plenty do) the honest output is that it does, plus where to look next.
What changed on 24 September 2026
This page used to map thirteen areas and say there were thirteen. There are 39, and the gap was not academic: a mains-powered product came back with low voltage and EMC and no mention of RoHS, which covers most electrical and electronic equipment. It maps all 39 now, and the register records the error.
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. GOV.UK publishes designated standards for 39 product areas: explosives and pyrotechnics; conformity assessment; construction products; cosmetics, general product safety, PPE and toys; fourteen energy-related product types; EMC, low voltage, radio equipment and RoHS; medical devices, in vitro diagnostics and active implants; measuring and weighing instruments; and cableways, explosive atmospheres, gas appliances, lifts, machinery, pressure equipment, recreational craft and simple pressure vessels. Several often apply at once: a mains-powered machine with Wi-Fi sits under at least four.
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 39 product areas to the few worth reading, which is what this one does.
What if nothing matches?
Then it says so. Plenty of products sit outside all 39 areas 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
- 01 GOV.UK, “Designated standards”: the index of 39 product areas, each linked to its own publication, read on 24 September 2026, when every one of the 39 pages was opened and loaded. The standards counted here are from the consolidated lists for the thirteen areas this site carries: 3,517 standards, read on 8 September 2026, ingested into
notes/standards.jsonand rebuilt bybuild-standards.mjs. Each result links to its GOV.UK page, where the position is authoritative. gov.uk(opens in a new tab)Weight: government publication, primary Re-checked: every six months Last read: 24 September 2026
- 02 The seven 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.
Weight: our opinion, labelled Re-checked: never: it cannot go out of date
Checked 24 September 2026. Next scheduled check 23 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.