Clearview South December 2013 - Issue 145 | Page 39

CEMARKING

“I’m sure you’ve heard the old folk tale about the Little Red Hen,” says Mike Gaillard,
Joint Managing Director of CENSolutions. “The Little Red Hen finds a grain of wheat, and
asks for help from the other farmyard animals to plant it, but none of them volunteer.

At each stage of the process,
through to baking flour into
bread, the Little Red Hen
continues to ask for help to no
avail.

Finally, the hen has completed
the task, and asks who will help
to eat the bread. This time, all
the animals eagerly volunteer to
help eat the bread. Little Red Hen
declines their help this time and
enjoys the bread without them.
The moral of the story of course,
is that those who don’t put the
effort into something shouldn’t
get the rewards when they come
to fruition.
“What has this got to do with
CE Marking I hear you ask?
Well six months on from the
implementation date and we
continue to hear from companies
who have put in all the hard
work they need to, to ensure
compliance, but who feel let

down by the lack of support from
industry bodies. Repeated requests
for help have gone unheard. In
particular no-one seems to want to
take responsibility for the policing
of the new standard, which means
it is up to Trading Standards to
keep track of it.
Although Trading Standards
are excellent at what they do,
they don’t know our industry
and how CE Marking applies
in the same way our industry
bodies do. The feedback we are
getting from the industry is that
they simply don’t feel that CE
Marking is being taken seriously
because of the lack of policing.
CENSolutions has been doing
all it can to address the issue by

working with Trading Standards
to help them understand the
implications in more detail, but
we’re disappointed on behalf of
the companies that have made the
effort to comply, that they aren’t
getting the support they hoped
for.
“Despite this disappointment,
as in the story of the Little Red
Hen we would urge companies
to keep going where CE Marking
is concerned because we believe
that companies that take the high
ground and do things properly
will reap the rewards they deserve
in the end. And at the end of the
day, regardless of the policing that
is or isn’t in place, let’s not forget
that CE Marking is now law.”

How is the joinery industry
coping with CE marking?
A report by software provider Joinerysoft.
Interest was high initially, with
over 150 joiners attending the
first CE marking seminar run
by Joinerysoft Ltd in June, just
before the regulations became
law. Joinerysoft has run three
workshops on CE marking but
predict that many hundreds,
if not thousands of joinery
manufacturers are still not CE
marking.
Invited to present a CE
marking workshop to building
control officers provided
valuable feedback on the
stance taken by both building
control and trading standards
officers. Joinerysoft received
the impression that while these
enforcers get up to speed with
the new legislation themselves

they are giving a grace time to
comply until early next year, but
clearly this will vary from region
to region.
Joinery manufacturers are
commonly reporting that they
are now increasingly being asked
for u-values by architects and
customers. Bearing in mind this
became a legal requirement in
2010 could indicate that CE
marking may similarly lag behind
the legal commencement date.
Even though the legislation
may be slowly policed, feedback
from building control suggests
that building control officers may
be the advance field workers of
trading standards to report back
instances of non-compliance.
Certainly building control has

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intimated that they will not be
signing off work that does not
have a required CE-mark.
The reality is that CE marking
legislation has simply brought
together all other regulations
that should have been complied
with already. CE marking
itself isn’t difficult and those
companies that embrace it will
be able to shout about it in their
marketing further increasing
customer awareness and raising
expectations.
For joinery companies
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