Campaigners have called for a single Europe-wide fire safety standard for upholstered furniture after tests showed wide variations in performance across 27 countries.

The study, carried out for a campaign by the Alliance for Consumer Fire Safety in Europe (ACFSE), shows “an enormous discrepancy” between sofas produced to the higher standards in the UK and Ireland, compared to those in other EU member states.

The campaign’s website, called Are You Sitting Comfortably?, says the majority of sofas created life-threatening heat and smoke density conditions in less than four minutes – and in some cases in as little as two minutes – after ignition.

By comparison, the UK sofa did not turn into a life-threatening situation – characterised by a heat release threshold of 400kW – until more than 20 minutes after ignition.

The campaign website has an interactive burn test tool which allows people to view how fast their country’s sofa performs.

Researchers received a shock, however, when the test on a sofa bought in Ireland emitted heat in excess of this threshold in under four minutes, forcing them to abandon the test and evacuate the research building. It was subsequently discovered that the sofa was made for the Netherlands market. A second sofa from Ireland was tested resulting in the threshold being reached in just under 15 minutes, more in line with expectations.

Robert Graham, founder and executive director of the ACFSE and a former chief officer of Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, said:

“This highlights even more strongly the need for a common fire safety standard for upholstered furniture across the whole of Europe. With the porous borders between EU member states, it is extremely difficult to enforce safety standards of furniture being shipped between countries.

“Consumers in countries with high fire safety standards will buy furniture expecting it to be fire safe. But that may not be the case – and this test shows why. If anything, their lives are in even more danger because of their underlying assumption that the sofa in their living room will not catch fire easily – and they may lower their guard because of that wrong assumption.”

The ACFSE, which currently receives financial support from the European Flame Retardants Association, bought 27 typical household two- or three-seater sofas, one from each EU member state. The sofas were then sent to the Efectis fire testing centre in the Netherlands. There, each sofa was tested for criteria including heat release, maximum temperature and smoke density.

If the regulations In the UK and Ireland were extended to the entire EU, the campaign estimates the move would save at least 850 lives a year.