SCS and Harveys sofa cushions on Fake Britain

You may have seen several well known sofa and bed retailers products fail fire tests in the BBC's programme 'Fake Britain' broadcast on Monday 13th January 2014.

In the BBC consumer affairs program, Fake Britain, several leading furniture and bed retailers were involved in an investigation into product compliance with the UK's fire safety regulations for furniture.

Leicestershire Trading Standards bought 10 sofas from a variety of national high street chains and independents, and eight of the ten products failed part of the fire regulations testing. The sofas bought from Harveys and SCS featured heavily in the programme along with mattresses from Argos and Homebase, Amazon and Tesco Direct, which failed to meet these standards.

The mattresses tested were from Ventura Corporation, marketed under the Sleep Secrets brand. All of the mattresses bought failed the fire regulations when tested at FIRA's testing facility in Stevenage. Ventura commented that it has issued a product recall and was undertaking its own investigation. The origin of the mattresses not known by FIRA at the time of testing.

Fake Britain can be viewed or downloaded directly from the BBC website.

No doubt consumers who have purchased, in good faith sofas and mattresses from well respected suppliers may be somewhat concened by the issues raised by the programme. Unfortunately there is no simple way to test whether the foam in a sofa or mattress complies with the fire regulations apart from setting fire to it.

Our foams are all manufactured in the UK and tested in the UK. We have dealt with our foam suppliers for many years and have a good trusting relationship with them. If we had any concerns about the origin of our foam we would not buy it.

Therefore you can rest assured that any foam we supply for cushions is manufactured and tested in the United Kingdom and has pased the stringent testing to comply with the furniture fire regulations.

foamcushion.co.uk