UKCA Marking Is Now Effectively Voluntary for Pressure Equipment: What Changed and What Didn't

Since October 2024, CE marking has had indefinite legal recognition for placing pressure equipment on the Great Britain market, given effect through the Product Safety and Metrology etc. (Amendment) Regulations 2024. The change covers 21 product regulations administered by the Department for Business and Trade, including the Pressure Equipment (Safety) Regulations 2016 and the Simple Pressure Vessels (Safety) Regulations 2016. In practice, this means UKCA marking (long anticipated as a hard requirement following its original 2023 deadline) is now effectively voluntary for most pressure equipment: a CE-marked vessel or assembly compliant with the EU Pressure Equipment Directive (PED 2014/68/EU) can legally be sold in Great Britain without a separate UKCA assessment.

Technically, this changes very little about the design work itself. UK PESR 2016 was built as a near copy-paste of EU PED 2014/68/EU: the essential safety requirements, hazard categorisation by fluid group and pressure-volume product, and the conformity assessment module structure (Module A2/D1/E1 for Category II, B/D/E/F/C2/H for Category III, and so on up to Category IV) are functionally identical between the two regimes. Design and build to a harmonised standard, EN 13445 for unfired pressure vessels, EN 13480 for industrial piping, or an equivalent designated standard, satisfies the technical requirement regardless of which mark eventually goes on the nameplate. What differs is purely which mark is applied, which Declaration of Conformity is issued, and which notified (EU) or approved (UK) body carries out the assessment.

The recognition is not universal, and the exceptions are the part most worth double-checking before assuming it applies. Transportable pressure equipment sits outside the general pressure equipment relaxation entirely, governed instead by its own 'rho-marking' regime that commenced in January 2023. Medical devices, construction products, marine equipment, rail products, cableways and unmanned aircraft systems are also excluded from the general CE recognition and each follow sector-specific transitional arrangements. Northern Ireland remains a separate case again, governed by UKNI marking rather than either UKCA or the GB-wide CE recognition.

For engineers specifying or certifying conventional process and industrial pressure equipment (vessels, exchangers, receivers, pipework assemblies) the practical effect is that a parallel UKCA assessment many were still budgeting for as a near-term certainty is, for now, not required provided the equipment is properly CE-marked and PED-compliant. That said, this is a policy that has moved more than once since 2021, and the safest practice remains the same regardless: specify compliance with the underlying harmonised standard (EN 13445/EN 13480 or equivalent) on the drawing and purchase order rather than a specific mark, and confirm the current marking requirement for the destination market (Great Britain, Northern Ireland, or EU) at the point of order rather than assuming last year's guidance still holds.