SIR - Brexit was supposed to free up UK manufacturers from the (alleged) red-tape imposed by EU membership. Sadly, Brexit has had the opposite effect.

Michael Gove's “Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities” has given notice that from 2025 materials used in building will need to pass a UK-based testing system (despite the fact that these materials will have already passed tests to comply with EU standards).

Recticel is a Stoke-based firm producing insulation materials. Simon Blackham, Recticel’s senior technical manager in the UK, explains that means everything will need to be retested, by a UK-based lab. In Recticel’s case, he says, this would have to be done for eight products, at a cost of approximately £35,000 each. The firm will also have to repeat fire testing, at about £14,000 a product. This amounts to a total additional cost of £400,000.

Mr Blackham reports: “It’s the same standards, to the same test method, the same everything - and it would have to be paid for, ultimately by the customer”.

Other government departments have quietly dropped any requirement for a UK re-test where there is a robust EU test already in place. What this points up is the sheers pig-headedness of Michael Gove - and for that matter, all those people who continue to deny that Brexit is proving a disaster.

John Cole Chair, Bradford for Europe, Oakroyd Terrace, Baildon