As of 13 August 2026, AI cannot decide whether a product is safe to sell in the UK.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface gets you a draft, but you cannot verify it yourself. That is the catch.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the product file and gather the specification, intended-use description, packaging, labels, instructions, supplier declarations, test reports, incident records and change history.
   2. Record the product type, intended users, foreseeable misuse, manufacturer or importer, sales route and UK nations involved in a single working document.
   3. Check GOV.UK for current guidance relevant to the product category and save the source pages with the date accessed.
   4. Paste the product facts, documents and source links into the prompt, keeping each document labelled with its name and version.
   5. Ask the model to produce the fact table, hazard list, applicable-obligation questions, evidence gaps and provisional HOLD or review status without making a final release decision.
   6. Compare every claimed fact and document reference against the original product file, and remove any conclusion that is based on an assumption or an unverified source.
   7. Send the unresolved gaps and the model's audit trail to a product-safety lawyer or competent product-compliance professional, and record their release decision before sale.

   Prompt

   Act as a product-safety document analyst, not the final decision-maker. I need to assess whether this product may be sold in the UK.
   
   Product type: [describe the product]
   Intended users: [describe the users, including children or vulnerable users if relevant]
   Intended use and foreseeable misuse: [describe both]
   Manufacturer or importer: [name and country]
   Sales route and location: [online, shop, marketplace, business-to-business, and UK nations involved]
   Product specifications: [paste or attach]
   Instructions and warnings: [paste or attach]
   Labels, packaging and markings: [paste or attach]
   Supplier declarations and test reports: [paste or attach]
   Incident, complaint and change history: [paste or attach]
   
   Using only the information supplied and clearly identified current UK government or regulator sources, produce:
   1. A fact table separating supplied facts, assumptions and missing information.
   2. The product hazards and foreseeable misuse scenarios that need assessment.
   3. The UK product-safety obligations and evidence that may apply, without guessing the product category or claiming compliance where the evidence is missing.
   4. A document and testing gap list, with each gap linked to the risk it leaves unresolved.
   5. A provisional status of HOLD, READY FOR COMPETENT REVIEW, or EVIDENCE APPEARS COMPLETE. Do not state that the product is legally safe to sell and do not give a final release decision.
   6. The specific questions a competent UK product-safety professional must answer before sale.
   7. A short audit trail showing which supplied document supports each conclusion.
   
   Flag every uncertain or time-sensitive point. Do not invent test results, standards, certificates, dates or legal conclusions. This is not professional advice. A serious or uncertain case must be checked by a product-safety lawyer or competent product-compliance professional.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.