Furniture assembly is a cottage industry, but with more and more people entering the business some form of accreditation is required to give the general public confidence that their chosen assembler is bonafide and knows what they are doing.

At present there are no standard qualifications in assembling furniture. So with 15 years experience, I thought I would put one together, you can only pass the tests if you have experience assembling a wide range of furniture regularly.

I’ve also trawled the BSI standards to collate as much of the legalisation as I can. Simple things like where and how slats are fastened on the top bunk of a bunk bed are prescribed by law. Your assembler should know this. So I have written a guide covering the key points and there is a test to pass.

E-Commerce legislation stipulates that everyone and every business advertising online, must provide their full name (or limited company, company number and directors names), telephone number, email address and postal address plus their VAT No (if registered). Only genuine traders will provide all this information on their website. We do not insist on this (because we do not want out of date info) but ask all our registered assemblers to provide an internet link to where the public can find it, ie on their website, Facebook page etc.

We’ll be adding a few more features to help build confidence in future, but for now we are keeping it simple to get as many people on board as possible.