Call for backing over danger sofa scheme

The Association of British Furniture Manufacturers (BFM) has held a meeting with special advisers to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson in a bid to win Government backing for a project to rid Britain of dangerous sofas.

A spokesman for the BFM, which has 25 members in Yorkshire, said it hoped to receive a Government response to the proposal within weeks.

It's estimated that there is still 3.5bn of upholstery in Britain that pre-dates 1988 safety regulations which banned sofas with highly flammable material.

Since the legislation was introduced, the number of people dying in house fires each year has fallen from 731 to less than 350.

The BFM believes the death toll could fall even further if a sofa scrappage scheme was introduced. It would also provide a much-needed boost in demand for the furniture retail sector.

The BFM has prepared a briefing paper for the Government for a scheme that would allow householders to receive a discount of 20 per cent – 10 per cent from the Government and 10 per cent from the retailer – on a new sofa or chair in exchange for a pre-1988 sofa, which would be collected by the retailer.

The retailer would provide the Government with evidence that the sofa had been scrapped and receive half the discount back.

Roger Mason, the managing director of BFM, said the scheme would help to reduce fire hazards, adding: "There will be a high number of people with these sofas who are on extremely low incomes or they could have had the sofa handed down."

He said that if the Government didn't approve the scheme, the board of BFM would consider implementing a form of sofa scrappage themselves. However, he stressed that Government support for the scheme would heighten its profile.

The briefing paper stresses that your chances of surviving a fire are reduced if you have old furniture. People living in houses where furniture complies with the regulations are more likely to escape from a house fire. Furniture made since 1988 has material that is much less flammable.

However, the BFM is concerned about the large numbers of sofas and chairs which were bought before 1988 or have been imported illegally since.

A BFM spokesman said: "The sofa scrappage scheme gives Government and industry the opportunity to remove this highly dangerous product from the nation's homes, as well as providing an important boost to the UK furniture manufacturing industry.

"Consumers will be able to trade in their non-compliant products for new, compliant, British manufactured sofas and chairs. They will be supported in this with financial incentives, match-funded by industry and Government.

"The BFM plans to administer such an initiative and seek Government support to assist the initial set-up, marketing and co-funding of the scheme."

Under the BFM proposals, each person looking to participate in the sofa scrappage scheme would have to prove they were living at a UK registered address. The new sofa would have to conform to UK fire regulations.

According to the BFM, annual output from UK furniture manufacturing is worth around 10bn to Britain's economy at factory gate prices. Furniture manufacturing employs around 125,000 people in 7,000 businesses.