UK Trends and Developments Contributed by: Lisa Lunt and Sarah Samuel, Fletchers Solicitors
Fletchers Solicitors Fletchers Solicitors St James Tower 7 Charlotte Street Manchester M1 4DZ UK Tel: +44 161 388 1733 Fax: +44 871 971 1622 Email: enquiry@fs.co.uk Web: www.fletcherssolicitors.co.uk
Trends and Developments: The UK’s Ten-Year Longstop for Defective Product Claims – Time to Move to 25 Years? A growing body of claimant and practitioner experi - ence shows that, under the absolute ten-year long - stop limitation period for statutory claims brought under the Consumer Protection Act 1987, claims regularly expire before injuries caused by defective products are discovered, diagnosed, or linked to the product. With the EU’s new Product Liability Direc - tive extending the longstop to 25 years for latent per - sonal injury claims, the UK now faces a sharp policy choice: retain certainty for producers or widen access to justice for those injured by products whose harms emerge slowly. The Consumer Protection Act 1987 (CPA) – the UK’s strict liability route for defective products – was designed to provide a straightforward path to com - pensation without proving negligence. In practice, however, a hard procedural barrier often determines outcomes long before liability is tested on the facts: the CPA claim must be brought within an absolute ten-year “longstop” from the date the product was first put into circulation. This is not a mere technical rule. For many product categories, especially medicines, medical devices and implanted products – harm can take years to manifest and longer still to be properly attributed to the prod - uct. Where the longstop has expired, the claimant’s strict liability claim under the CPA is extinguished irre - spective of merit. That outcome has fuelled renewed
calls to extend the UK longstop to 25 years, aligning with the European Union’s modernised Product Liabil - ity Directive, Directive (EU) 2024/2853 (“New PLD”), which expressly lengthens the longstop in cases of latent personal injury. The current UK position: a three-year knowledge period plus an absolute ten-year longstop Product-related claims can be advanced in several ways (including negligence and contract), each with its own limitation framework under the Limitation Act 1980. However, the strict liability route under Part I of the CPA is distinct and, for many claimants, it is the most realistic cause of action because it removes the need to prove fault and focuses on defect and causation. Limitation for CPA actions is governed by Section 11A of the Limitation Act 1980 (inserted by the CPA). Sec - tion 11A establishes the following two key features: • A Three-Year Primary Limitation Period: Where damages include personal injury (and in many cases property damage), proceedings must gener - ally be brought within three years of the later of (i) the date the cause of action accrued and (ii) the claimant’s (or injured person’s) “date of knowledge” (Limitation Act 1980, s 11A(4)). • An Absolute Ten-Year Longstop: Regardless of knowledge, no CPA action may be brought after ten years from the “relevant time” (Limitation Act 1980, s 11A(3)). Crucially, this subsection operates to extinguish the right of action whether or not the
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