What is the difference between the OPSS Product Safety Database and the public recalls list?

What is the Product Safety Database, and who logs into it?

The United Kingdom Product Safety Database (PSD) is the notification system used by local-authority Trading Standards (or environmental health in Northern Ireland), certain national regulators, and Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) enforcement teams. They use it to report unsafe or non-compliant products to the Secretary of State, as product-safety law requires.

OPSS's own help pages describe how those teams create a notification, attach a product record, add evidence and record corrective actions. A notification is an enforcement case file. It is not a public product lookup. The same pages tell users they must be logged in to download category lists. That login is for market-surveillance staff, not for a mum checking a second-hand monitor or highchair.

Official records show the PSD replaced two EU systems — Safety Gate and ICSMS — for Great Britain after EU Exit. OPSS publishes high-level findings from those notifications as official statistics. The database itself stays an authority tool.

What does the public GOV.UK list actually publish?

Since 7 April 2022, the consumer-facing record has been the Product Safety Alerts, Reports and Recalls list on GOV.UK. OPSS guidance to authorities calls this a single, national product-safety and recalls website for UK market-surveillance authorities.

The three public alert types are product recalls (you may need to return the item for a repair, replacement or refund), product safety reports (a corrective measure other than a recall), and product safety alerts (a category or sector warning).

Why can a product sit on the PSD and never appear on GOV.UK?

OPSS does not put every PSD row on the public list. The authority guidance says notices are published by routine when a product is assessed as presenting a serious or high risk, or when it has been recalled or put on a modification programme — and only after OPSS has validated the notification. Authorities can also ask for a report to be published at a lower risk level. Everything else can stay inside the database.

OPSS is explicit: product-notification figures are not a national count of unsafe goods. A quiet public list is not proof that Trading Standards never opened a file.

Where should I search if Google sent me to the PSD login?

Search engines often surface the PSD hostname (`product-safety-database.service.gov.uk`) because it contains the words "product safety". That is the staff service. Do not create a notification, and do not wait for an account. Public search stays on GOV.UK and, for baby kit, on MayTally's lookup.

1. 1
   Open the public list Go to Product Safety Alerts, Reports and Recalls. Type the brand or the model code — not a marketing nickname.
2. 2
   Read the measure, not only the headline A product safety report can still name a recall from end users, a listing removal, an import rejection or a modification programme. The field-by-field walk-through shows how those lines are labelled.
3. 3
   Use MayTally only as a shortcut The safety lookup searches a hand-picked set of official OPSS notices for baby products and shows the official wording. If a model is not there, go to the GOV.UK list directly.
4. 4
   Treat 'not found' as one gate No published notice means no recall on file for that wording. It is not a clearance, and it does not mean the product was never logged on the PSD.

If the public list is empty, has the product been cleared?

No. An empty result means no published notice matched your words. Three gaps sit behind that blank page:

• The case never met the publication rule. Border rejections, destroyed stock and many marketplace takedowns stay on the PSD unless they are serious or high risk, a recall, a modification programme, or an authority asks for a report.
• The wording did not match. Notices are written against a model code, barcode or batch, not a shop title such as "grey video monitor".
• The unit in your hands was never tested. Official records show a listing, or they do not. Not found is not a laboratory result.

The Lullaby Trust treats British Standards and a GOV.UK recall search as separate checks on second-hand baby products. A quiet database does not replace either step. A UKCA or CE mark does not replace the list either.

In shortUse the GOV.UK public list, not the PSD login. Listed: follow that notice. Not listed: you have cleared one published-record gate — not the product, and not every file Trading Standards may hold.

What is the PSD annual report for, if I cannot search the database?

The annual report is official statistics about notifications, not a catalogue of baby products. It tells you where market-surveillance work clustered — electrical appliances, toys, cosmetics, childcare articles — and which corrective actions were recorded most often. It is useful when you are trying to understand why a marketplace listing vanished, or why a highchair notice is titled "product safety report" instead of "recall".

It is not a second search engine. If you need the action for an item you already own, stay on the public list and read the corrective-action line. If the listing disappeared from TikTok or Amazon, that measure is common on the PSD — check the notice that names the product rather than treating delisting as the end of the story.