Plans to Tackle Lithium Battery Fires Included in King’s Speech

A new bill that includes proposals to manage the risk of e-bike battery fires has been announced in the King’s Speech in July.

The Product Safety and Metrology Bill is intended to support businesses and protect consumers through product regulation. It particularly aims to manage new technologies such as AI and deal with existing challenges associated with new technologies, such as the fire risk related to e-bikes and lithium-ion batteries.

The proposed bill states it will do this by:

• Responding to new product risks and opportunities
• Identifying new and emerging business models
• Ensuring that the law can be updated to recognise new or updated EU produce regulations
• Enabling improvements to compliance and enforcement
• Updating the legal metrology framework

Both Electrical Safety First (ESF) and the Bicycle Association (BA) have praised the bill as a step towards managing the fires caused by e-bike lithium batteries. ESF called it a ‘major positive step in protecting the UK public from unsafe e-bikes and devastating lithium-ion battery fires’ following their previous proposal in 2023 calling on the government to introduce such measures’. BA stated that the bill ‘reflects the industry’s sustained calls for Government to act on this issue.’.

The Kings Speech directly referred to the rise in e-bike fires, stating that ‘there is an urgent need to legislate to respond to emerging threats to consumer safety, for example, e-bike fires, where there was a 78% increase in e-bike fires in 2023 compared to 2022 in London, according to the London Fire Brigade.’

It is important to note that despite this positive feedback, this is just a proposed bill, and no further action has been taken as of yet.

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