The statutory instrument made on 22 July 2026 and signed by Jonathan Reynolds at the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade rewrites how machinery safety law is organised across the UK from 20 January 2027. According to the instrument on legislation.gov.uk, Part 2 applies to England and Wales and Scotland, while Part 3 applies to Northern Ireland. The change is driven by Regulation (EU) 2023/1230, the EU Machinery Regulation, which replaces the earlier machinery directive. The preamble records that the Secretary of State consulted persons considered appropriate and that the draft instrument was approved by both Houses of Parliament. The explanatory note states that Northern Ireland will be subject to the EU Regulation under the Windsor Framework, while Great Britain will keep the amended Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008 as its domestic base rulebook.
For Great Britain, the most immediate drafting change is territorial. The 2008 Regulations are amended so that they extend only to England and Wales and Scotland, and a series of Northern Ireland references are removed as no longer needed. That is not only a tidying exercise. The new text in regulations 12A and 12B creates a route by which machinery and partly completed machinery meeting the EU Machinery Regulation can still be placed on the market in Great Britain, provided the responsible person meets specific conditions on safety requirements, technical documentation, conformity assessment, product information and instructions.
In practice, the Great Britain route closely tracks the EU rulebook for relevant products. The responsible person must ensure the machinery meets the essential health and safety requirements in Annex III, that technical documentation is prepared or translated into English, and that it can be supplied to enforcement authorities for at least 10 years after the product is placed on the market. The same approach runs through declarations and user information. An EU declaration of conformity must be drawn up in the required form, prepared in or translated into English, and kept available for 10 years. The declaration may accompany the machinery directly or be made available through an internet address or machine-readable code. Where this route is used, the instrument treats several existing Great Britain requirements as met and, for those products, reads references to the UK marking as references to the CE marking. A parallel route applies to partly completed machinery. Here, the responsible person must ensure the relevant Annex III requirements are met, retain technical documentation for 10 years, provide an EU declaration of incorporation, and supply assembly instructions in English.
The amended regulation 12C deals with qualifying Northern Ireland goods. Where machinery or partly completed machinery meets the Northern Ireland requirements as applied through Part 3 of the 2026 Regulations, is a qualifying Northern Ireland good, and is accompanied by the responsible person's or authorised representative's name and address, the remaining Part 3 requirements are treated as met for Great Britain purposes. The effect is continuity of access from Northern Ireland into the Great Britain market. Businesses selling across the Irish Sea do not need a separate Great Britain-only compliance route for those qualifying goods, but they do need to keep the Northern Ireland status of the goods and the accompanying identification details in order.
Northern Ireland moves onto a different legal footing from the same commencement date. The explanatory note states that Article 5(4) of the Windsor Framework brings listed EU product legislation into effect in Northern Ireland, and from 20 January 2027 that means the EU Machinery Regulation applies there in place of the older directive model. Part 3 of the instrument then does the domestic work around that EU Regulation. It recognises UK notified bodies for Northern Ireland purposes where they satisfy Article 30 requirements and have been notified by the Secretary of State to the European Commission and the member States. Where one of those UK bodies carries out the conformity assessment procedure, the CE marking must be accompanied by the UK(NI) indication, placed visibly, legibly and indelibly next to the CE mark before the product is placed on the Northern Ireland market. Importers are brought directly into that process. The regulations state that an importer must ensure the UK(NI) indication has been affixed in line with the legal requirements before machinery or a related product is placed on the market in Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland enforcement structure is set out with more precision than many explanatory notes provide. Under regulation 9, the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland enforces the EU Machinery Regulation and the UK(NI) indication rules for products used at work. District councils enforce the regime for products not for use at work within their areas, while the Secretary of State or an appointed person may also act in that non-work sphere. The instrument also designates those enforcers as market surveillance authorities for the purposes of the EU Machinery Regulation. It provides a domestic route for information that must be disclosed to the European Commission or member States, allowing enforcers to pass it to the Secretary of State for onward disclosure, subject to the usual data protection limits. Alongside that, the Secretary of State must assign identification numbers to UK notified bodies and maintain a public register covering the bodies, their numbers, the activities for which they have been notified and any restrictions on those activities. The regulations also allow the UK national accreditation body to compile and maintain that register.
The compliance backstop is criminal as well as administrative. Regulation 12 makes it an offence for an economic operator to breach key obligations in the EU Machinery Regulation, including duties placed on manufacturers, importers and distributors, rules on identifying economic operators, and the general principles and affixing rules for the CE marking. The treatment of the UK(NI) indication is more graduated. If the mark is missing or wrongly affixed, the enforcer must first require the operator to put matters right within a reasonable period. Other enforcement action on that point must wait until that period has expired. If the failure continues, the enforcer must secure withdrawal or recall of the product, and a criminal offence arises only after the operator fails to comply with the corrective notice. The penalty provision allows up to three months' imprisonment or a statutory maximum fine on summary conviction, and up to two years' imprisonment or a fine on indictment.
There is a clear saving for products already on the market. For Great Britain, machinery and partly completed machinery lawfully placed on the market in Great Britain, Northern Ireland or the EU before 20 January 2027 under the earlier version of regulations 12A, 12B or 12C may continue to be made available in Great Britain, and the associated obligations continue to apply. For Northern Ireland, the 2008 Regulations are revoked, but products lawfully placed on the Northern Ireland or EU market before the change can continue to be made available there, with existing obligations preserved. For manufacturers, importers, distributors and conformity assessment bodies, the date to work to is 20 January 2027. Before then, firms trading in Great Britain and Northern Ireland will need to check which route each product follows, whether CE or CE plus UK(NI) marking is required, whether declarations and technical files are held in English, and whether documentation retention and labelling processes run for the full 10-year period. The explanatory note adds that no full impact assessment has been produced because the Government does not expect a significant effect on the private, public or voluntary sectors.