Weights and measures
These regulations are designed to give consumers reassurance over the quantities they are purchasing.
You can find all 42 regulations that relate to weights and measures here [opens in new window].
Tell us what you think should happen to these regulations and why, being specific where possible:
- Should they be scrapped altogether?
- Can they be merged with existing regulations?
- Can we simplify them – or reduce the bureaucracy associated with them?
- Have you got any ideas to make these regulations better?
- Do you think they should be left as they are?
Please let us use pounds and ounces, pints and fluid ounces and feet and inches again. I am not old, I’m only in my thirties, but I have no idea how heavy a kilogram is or how much a litre is.
When I buy items by length, such as ribbon, I start asking for “a yard of” something, then realise that the retailer could be prosecuted for selling me items by the yard, so i have to quickly change what i was asking for to ” a metre of”.
Its time to abandon prescribed quantities. They were brought in during WW II so that there were standard sizes for bread, flour, rice and other essential commodities and as such they are a post war relic. The Average weight provisions sit on top of them so that you have the average weight principle as well as a prescribed quantity. Why not let producers make these goods and be subject to normal weight requirements? In this way the maker chooses the nominal quanitity best fitting his process and the market requirements. Many PQ’s have been relaxed but some still remain. They’ve had their day, time to go.