thepat|man in association with Nottighamshire Fire and Rescue service’s community safety team offer the public free Christmas Fairy Light safety inspections and tests.
After this year’s successful Electric Blanket safety checks we are going to offer the same sort of service for Christmas Fairy Lights. However we expect the failure rate to be much higher than for the blankets as the first part of the inspection will be of Marks and Cerification to show compliance with British and European Safety Standards. On the electric blankets this information is printed on a piece of fabric wich is sewn into the structure of the blanket and is difficult to remove. This is the reason so many are left intact and can be checked.
With Christmas Fairy Lights the information is on a piece of plastic or card and is wrapped around the flex. It is large and unsightly and it is likely to be removed prior to use. Unfortunately one this information is gone the lights will fall at the first hurdle, regardless of whether they are actually dangerous or not. This is because there is no way to distinguish between lights that have been manufactured to high safety standards and those that are “Grey imports” from goodness knows where, or even counterfeit goods.