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Government & Public Affairs

The LIA represents the UK lighting industry at local, national, and international levels, ensuring that members’ interests are heard where policy and regulation are shaped.

The Lighting Industry Association (The LIA) represents the UK lighting sector, spanning manufacturers, suppliers, and service providers. Lighting is fundamental to safety, health, wellbeing, productivity, and sustainability. 

High-quality, compliant lighting supports government goals in net zero, industrial growth, and public health. Poor-quality, non-compliant products undermine UK competitiveness and consumer protection, and sustainability targets.

Lighting is an essential green transition technology, fundamental to delivering net zero, healthier buildings, and a competitive UK lighting industry, where good lighting design, system integration and controls are as critical as the products themselves. Yet it is too often overlooked in government strategy. The LIA is therefore calling for clear recognition of lighting’s role and has defined advocacy priorities that focus on ensuring a level playing field, driving sustainability, safeguarding safety and wellbeing, supporting skills and industrial strategy, and securing international opportunities for our members.

Bob Bohannon, Head of Policy and Sustainability at The LIA

 

Government & Public Affairs Focus Areas

Seven key challenges we address for the lighting sector

Compliance
The UK market continues to face challenges from non-compliant and unsafe products, particularly through online sales, undermining reputable businesses.
The LIA is calling for:
  1. Stronger market surveillance and enforcement to remove unsafe or poor-quality products.
  2. Proportionate and consistently enforced minimum legal requirements across the supply chain, with clear expectations for all market actors while recognising appropriate adjustments for micro and small enterprises where justified.
  3. Clearer accountability for online marketplaces to ensure only compliant lighting products are sold.
  4. Simplified and clarified regulatory rules to support compliance and enforcement.
  5. Development of accessible UK guidance (equivalent to the EU “Blue Guide”) to provide industry with a single source of regulatory information.
Health and Wellbeing
Lighting directly affects health, wellbeing, and productivity but is often overlooked in public health policy and building regulations.
The LIA is calling for:
  1. Recognition of lighting as a core component of healthy homes, workplaces, schools, hospitals, and care settings.
  2. Inclusion of lighting in national health and building policies.
  3. Support for UK research and pilot projects to demonstrate the health and wellbeing benefits of good quality lighting.
  4. Harmonised, evidence-based approaches to light at night that balance safety, wellbeing, and environmental protection.
  5. Consumer awareness campaigns on choosing quality lighting.
Industrial Strategy
Lighting has been under-represented in UK industrial strategy and export support, despite its contribution to energy efficiency, safety, and wellbeing.
The LIA is calling for:
  1. Recognition of lighting as an enabling technology in UK industrial strategy and clean growth programmes.
  2. Inclusion of lighting in government clean energy and industrial support schemes.
  3. Public procurement reform to prioritise performance, quality, and sustainability rather than lowest price.
  4. Stronger regulatory and standards alignment with the EU and global markets.
  5. Re-establishment of government support for overseas trade shows and exhibitions.
  6. Efficient, internationally harmonised standards development processes to ensure UK competitiveness.
Skills
Skills shortages threaten future innovation and competitiveness in the UK lighting industry.
The LIA is calling for:
  1. Expanded funding and training opportunities that include specialist skills such as lighting design, emergency lighting, commissioning, and controls.
  2. A stronger pipeline of apprenticeships and vocational training linked to industry needs.
  3. Immigration and workforce planning policies that help address long-term skills gaps.
Life-Safety Products
Emergency lighting is a fundamental safety measure, yet standards and enforcement remain inconsistent.
The LIA is calling for:
  1. Recognition of emergency lighting as an essential life-safety product requiring higher assurance.
  2. Stronger oversight of emergency lighting compliance across design, manufacture, installation, and maintenance.
Digitalisation
Lighting and controls are critical to smart buildings and smart cities but face growing cybersecurity and data challenges.
The LIA is calling for:
  1. A risk-based approach to data security for connected lighting and control systems.
  2. Full integration of lighting and controls into digitalisation strategies for the built environment.
Sustainability
Lighting remains one of the most deliverable low-carbon technologies in buildings but needs a lifecycle approach to sustainability and a shift from product level to systems level energy saving policy approaches.
The LIA is calling for:
  1. Promotion of good design and controls as drivers of energy savings, not just lumens per watt, recognising that ever-higher efficacy is no longer the primary route to energy reduction and can risk compromising lighting quality and user needs.
  2. Alignment of UK and EU sustainability requirements to avoid divergence.
  3. Recognition of lighting as a key enabler of lifecycle sustainability in the built environment.
  4. Clear, proportionate and accessible frameworks for embodied carbon and circularity, recognising full LCA and EPDs as the long-term ambition while supporting accessible, credible starting points for SMEs such as TM65.2, alongside circularity reporting tools such as TM66 and CEAM.
  5. Recognition of the specificities of lighting products in waste and circular economy regulations (e.g. WEEE, packaging, right-to-repair).
  6. Recognition of Dark Skies and wildlife protection as core components of responsible lighting, including proportionate regulation and guidance that minimises skyglow, glare and ecological disruption through good design, curfews, full cut-off optics and “light only what is needed” principles.
  7. A pragmatic, evidence-based approach to regulating substances of concern (e.g. PFAS) that recognises lighting manufacturers sit far down the supply chain and that chemical producers are best placed to understand the availability and safety of alternative substances.
Healthy Homes and Buildings APPG

The Healthy Homes and Buildings All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)

The LIA participates in the Healthy Homes and Buildings APPG to ensure that lighting is recognised as a key contributor to healthier homes, workplaces, and public buildings. Through this group we stay close to parliamentary discussions shaping housing and wellbeing policy, helping us champion evidence-based approaches to good quality lighting as part of a healthy built environment.

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EURIS

EURIS (European Union Relationship & Industrial Strategy Taskforce)

The LIA is an active member of EURIS, a cross-industry taskforce focused on UK-EU regulatory alignment and industrial competitiveness. Working with EURIS enables us to represent the interests of the UK lighting industry in discussions on divergence, standards development, and trade impacts.

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Make UK

Make UK

The LIA works with Make UK to stay closely connected to national industrial strategy, manufacturing policy, and government engagement affecting UK industry. This partnership strengthens our advocacy on behalf of lighting manufacturers.

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BEEF

British Energy Efficiency Federation (BEEF)

The LIA is a member of the British Energy Efficiency Federation (BEEF), a cross-sector coalition working to ensure energy efficiency remains central to UK housing and industrial policy and supporting practical routes to lower-carbon buildings.

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Contact Us for a Quote – The LIA Laboratory
Government and Public Affairs Committee

Government and Public Affairs Committee

The LIA Government and Public Affairs Committee (GPAC) advises and informs The LIA Policy team, both with the message The LIA wishes to get across, and the strategy and plan as to how that communication and outreach should happen.

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23 Oct 2025

Have Your Say: Government Launches Business Questionnaire on Regulation

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has launched a new Business Questionnaire as part of the Government’s Autumn Regulatory Moment, announced during the recent Regional Investment Summit. The questionnaire invites business views on how UK regulation affects growth, innovation, and daily operations.

Advocacy