The Bicycle Association, the trade association for the UK cycle industry, welcomes the measures announced today in the King’s Speech around e-bike battery safety and the regulation of online marketplaces.
Urgent and effective actions to prevent lithium battery fires, which have serious and tragic consequences, will be supported by the mainstream cycle industry, whose generally very safe and thoroughly tested products have had an excellent safety record undermined by the unsafe products which are overwhelmingly responsible for the fires.
As outlined in the briefing notes on the King’s Speech (p. 38), the proposed Product Safety and Metrology Bill intends to address the issue of e-bike fires, not least by preventing unsafe products reaching consumers via online marketplaces:
The UK cycle industry welcomes this urgent action from the new Government on the e-bike fires issue.
The announcement reflects the industry’s sustained calls for Government to act on this issue, since even before the BA instigated a cross-Government roundtable on the issue in early 2023, and most recently in our pre-election UK Cycle Industry Manifesto.
The proposals outlined align very closely with two of our three main ‘asks’: the need to take urgent action, and to address unsafe direct imports via online marketplaces.
We also believe that an essential part of addressing the battery fires issue is to require ‘gig economy’ operators to provide safe and legal e-bikes for delivery riders, to limit the demand for unsafe e-bikes and conversion kits. We hope that this aspect may be addressed in other legislation.
The industry stands ready to work with Government as this legislation is drafted, and to support its implementation in due course.