Laws on Selling Homemade Crafts: Your UK Checklist
Answer three questions and get the common legal requirements for what you make and how you sell it, each with the law it comes from. Free, no sign-up, and a PDF to keep.
Answer all three questions to see your checklist. Still to answer: what you make, where you sell, whether you sell online.
What the law asks of a UK craft seller
The rules that apply depend on what you make and where you sell it. One set applies to every consumer product sold in the course of a business: the General Product Safety Regulations 2005, which require the product to be safe and, separately, ask for warnings where a risk is not obvious.
Scented products such as candles, wax melts, reed diffusers and room sprays are chemical mixtures, so GB CLP applies: each one is classified, and labelled if the classification identifies a hazard. Our complete UK guide to CLP labels and the free CLP label template cover that step. Soap, bath products and skincare are cosmetic products instead, with a Responsible Person, a safety report, a notification and their own label rules. Toys have their own regulations.
Selling online adds consumer rights such as the 14-day cancellation period, and selling to Northern Ireland or the EU brings in EU rules. For the wider picture, including tax and registering as a business, read our guide to the laws on selling homemade crafts in the UK.
How the checklist is built
Each item quotes the provision or official guidance it comes from, and links to it. The checklist adds a section only when your answers call for it, and an answer of “not sure” adds the sections it could affect rather than leaving them out. Sources last checked on :
- General Product Safety Regulations 2005 (S.I. 2005/1803) (revised text on legislation.gov.uk, checked 2 November 2026)
- GB CLP — Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 as it applies in Great Britain (revised text on legislation.gov.uk, checked 2 November 2026)
- UK Cosmetics Regulation — Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 as it applies in the UK (revised text on legislation.gov.uk, checked 2 November 2026)
- Toys (Safety) Regulations 2011 (S.I. 2011/1881) (revised text on legislation.gov.uk, checked 2 November 2026)
- Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 (revised text on legislation.gov.uk, checked 2 November 2026)
- Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 (S.I. 2002/2013) (revised text on legislation.gov.uk, checked 2 November 2026)
- GOV.UK — Submit a cosmetic product notification (GOV.UK guidance, checked 2 November 2026)
- GOV.UK (OPSS) — Making cosmetic products available to consumers in Great Britain (GOV.UK guidance, checked 2 November 2026)
- GOV.UK — EU Regulation 2023/988 on general product safety: detailed guidance (Northern Ireland) (GOV.UK guidance, checked 2 November 2026)
- HSE — CLP in GB or NI (HSE guidance, checked 2 November 2026)
- Business Companion (Trading Standards) — Candles, diffusers, oil heaters, etc (guide last reviewed May 2024 (as stated on the page))
- Business Companion (Trading Standards) — Toys (Business Companion guide, checked 2 November 2026)
- GOV.UK (OPSS) — Toys (Safety) Regulations 2011: guidance (GOV.UK statutory guidance, checked 2 November 2026)
- Business Companion (Trading Standards) — Product safety guides (Business Companion index, checked 2 November 2026)
Before you rely on it: this is a checklist of the common requirements to work through, for Great Britain unless an item says otherwise. It is not legal advice and it does not assess your products. For retail and online sales in Great Britain, HSE lists local Trading Standards as the authority for GB CLP concerns.