RoHS legislation enforcement in the UK will be handled by The National Weights and Measures Laboratory (NWML), based in Teddington, London.
“We want to work with industry, we need to help industry comply and are not going out in a heavy-handed way,” RoHS project manager Chris Smith told Electronics Weekly, although: “We have to demonstrate UK compliance with RoHS and at the end of the day NWML has to enforce the legislation.”
The Lab is the policy agency for weights and measures in the UK and its enforcement section supports local government Trading Standards departments. It is also involved in drafting weights and measures legislation as well as assessing due diligence systems.
“We have quite a lot of expertise here and we will be applying it to RoHS,” said Smith.
The NWML RoHS team will be setting up internal structures over the next few months, including sources of information for industry and an enquiry line with a dedicated contact team. “I expect to have a substantial website by the end of the Autumn,” said Smith.
Before then, staff will be available to answer phone queries, but Smith points out this service will be extremely limited until the RoHS section is fully up and running. “For the time being, if possible, people should use resources that are available now, Envirowise for example. If people have specific enquiries about policy, contact us,” he said, but “we may need to limit this during the set-up period”.
The NWML website, which currently contains only contact numbers, links and limited other information, can be found at www.rohs.gov.uk
See also: Electronics Weekly's RoHS Directive and UK RoHS regulation, a roundup of content related to the RoHS Directive.