Consumer Safety Act 1978

2 Offences against the safety regulations

(1) Where safety regulations prohibit a person from supplying or offering or agreeing to supply goods or from exposing or possessing goods for supply, then, subject to the following provisions of this section, the person shall be guilty of an offence if he contravenes the prohibition.

(2) Where safety regulations require a person who makes or processes goods in the course of carrying on a business—

(a) to carry out a particular test or use a particular procedure in connection with the making or processing of the goods with a view to ascertaining whether the goods satisfy other requirements of the regulations; or

(b) to deal or not to deal in a particular way with a quantity of the goods of which the whole or part does not satisfy the test or does not satisfy standards connected with the procedure,

then, subject to the following provisions of this section, the person shall be guilty of an offence if he does not comply with the requirement.

(3) If a person contravenes a provision of safety regulations which prohibits the provision, by means of a mark or otherwise, of information of a particular kind in connection with goods, then, subject to the following provisions of this section, he shall be guilty of an offence.

(4) A person who commits an offence in pursuance of the preceding provisions of this section (hereafter in this section referred to as " a relevant offence ") shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months and a fine of an amount not exceeding £1,000.

(5) Where the commission of a relevant offence by any person is due to the act or default of some other person, the other person shall be guilty of the offence and may be charged with and convicted of it whether or not proceedings are taken against the first-mentioned person.

(6) It shall be a defence to a charge of committing a relevant offence to prove that the accused took all reasonable steps and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence; but if in any case the defence provided by this subsection involves an allegation that the commission of the offence was due to the act or default of another person or due to reliance on information supplied by another person, the person charged shall not, without the leave of the court, be entitled to rely on the defence unless, within a period ending seven clear days before the hearing, he has served on the prosecutor a notice giving such information identifying or assisting in the identification of the other person as was then in his possession.

(7) Safety regulations may contain provision—

(a) for requiring persons on whom a duty is imposed by virtue of section 5 of this Act to have regard, in performing the duty so far as it relates to a provision of safety regulations, to matters specified in a direction issued by the Secretary of State with respect to that provision;

(b) for securing that a person shall not be guilty of an offence by virtue of subsection (1) of this section unless it is proved that the goods in question do not conform to a particular standard ;

(c) for securing that proceedings for a relevant offence are not begun in England or Wales except by or with the consent of the Secretary of State or the Director of Public Prosecutions;

(d) except in relation to Scotland, for enabling a magistrates' court to try an information in respect of a relevant offence if the information was laid within twelve months from the time when the offence was committed and, in relation to Scotland, for enabling summary proceedings for a relevant offence to be begun at any time within twelve months from the time when the offence was committed;

and it is hereby declared that subsection (3) of the preceding section applies to safety regulations made by virtue of this subsection.

(8) Safety regulations shall not provide for a contravention of the regulations to be an offence.