My spouse and I are North American expats. We moved to the UK several years ago, and shipped over most of our furniture, as we were getting reimbursed for the moving costs. We recently bought new chairs for our dining room and would like to get rid of the old ones, but because the chairs don't have British fire labels, no charity seems willing to take them (even though they have full intact Official Canadian and US/California Technical Bulletin 117-2000 labels). The chairs were purchased from IKEA in 2009; I compared old product records from the US and UK, and the upholstery materials are 100% identical. Literally no difference at all. So obviously they meet UK standards, they just don't have the UK labels because they weren't sold here. It seems to me there should be some sort of reciprocal agreement in this situation, given that they are completely within UK regulations, but I can't find any information about this or a solution. I'm not sure what to do because I can't keep these chairs in my flat any more. We simply don't have room for them, and I haven't found anybody online willing to take them unless we can deliver, which we can't do. Help?

Just because the materials look identical does not mean that they are identical (It would not be worth while taking it any further) as they do not have the required UK fire label as you have found no charity shop will accept them*. However as you are private individuals, there is no law that says you can not give (or sell) them to any Joe Bloggs. So there is nothing to stop you advertising them on the likes of Gumtree. If you have no joy with gumtree you will have to pay have them taken to the local tip, try gumtree first as collection only.

 

* If it helps, British people have the same problem, no fire label, no charity shop will take them.