Safety Issues

Theoretically car seats, crash helmets and cot mattresses are allowed on Freegle Groups; the general feeling on Freegle UK Central is to leave the decision on whether to take a seat/mattress/crash helmet or not to the member who wants it, so leaving the members to decide on whether or not they wish to take the possible risks. However, many of these issues are emotive. If you have strong feelings about the use of any of these items you can chose to not to allow them on your group. You may wish to consider polling your members first.

We believe that furniture or upholstered items used indoor do not need a valid fire label if one person is passing furniture to another. See page four of government advice:

In the Department's view, the simple distribution of second-hand furniture by a charity in pursuance of its charitable objectives to needy persons, either free of charge or at a nominal amount only, would be unlikely to constitute a supply in the course of business. On the other hand, shops selling furniture to raise funds for charitable purposes would constitute a business activity and the Regulations will apply to the furniture sold in this case. Individual charities should take legal advice.

Also, by limiting the things that are allowed for safety reasons we can be, by implication, suggesting that all other things are safe. Once you start doing that where do you stop?

Tip: one solution is to add a 'mod edit' to posts when you catch them in pending, pointing out the risks of using secondhand car seats and cot mattresses.

You might want to send out the following links, or add them to your links page to refer people to:

• http://www.motorcyclecrashhelmet.co.uk/index.html
• http://www.brake.org.uk/index.php?p=489
• http://www.childcarseats.org.uk/
• http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/childps/childrestraints/reuse/
• http://www.bis.gov.uk/files/file24685.pdf

(link to safety admins here)

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