The high street Halloween costumes that can still catch fire

This weekend, thousands of children across the country will be enjoying Halloween parties or joining their friends to trick or treat. But just how safe are the costumes that many of them will be wearing?

Over the last three weeks ITV News has been working with fire fighters to test the flammability of several high street Halloween costumes. We looked at six big brands to see how they performed.

The issue of flammability and children’s costumes gained national attention in 2014, when an outfit warn by television presenter Claudia Winkleman’s daughter caught fire on a tea-light.

Since then manufacturers have been under increased pressure to do more to prevent such costumes easily catching fire. But current European laws state that costumes only have to be tested as toys and do not have to meet stricter tests performed if they were classed as children’s nightwear.

All of the retailers we tested are meeting current legislation and testing their costumes beyond the legally required standards.

In our experiment we held a flame against the costumes for no more than three seconds. And while costumes from Tesco, Morrisons and Wilko did not light – or took a longer time to burn – those from Sainsbury’s and Asda appeared to set on fire more speedily. The B and M one also caught fire, but flames remained at the bottom of the costume.

Earlier this year the British Retail Consortium (BRC) announced its own Code of Practice, which goes beyond the current ‘toy test’ and exceeds the ‘nightwear’ test.

This test is voluntary but lots of retailers have signed up to it and now test their costumes to this standard. Nightwear must not burn quicker than 12mm per second. The BRC test states costumes must not burn quicker than 10mm per second.

Those who do not follow this code of practice still support the work of the BRC but believe their own in-house tests are extremely rigorous and go far enough.

Last year, Trading Standards carried out a nationwide investigation looking at whether retailers across the UK are meeting the basic toy safety standard. They found that “out of 309 samples, 47 costumes failed.”

All of the costumes tested were of a similar style, size and made from either 97 per cent or 100 per cent polyester. One leading textile expert believes this material is fit for purpose but told our team how it can create problems if put against a flame.

So, while more stringent testing is taking place and the retailers we have tested are doing much more to help keep children safe – as we have found – the costumes can still catch fire.

Fire fighters are advising parents to follow clear warning labels on the garments and, where possible, replace real candles with LED ones instead.

Should the worst case happen and a child’s costume does catch fire, follow the stop, drop, roll technique to extinguish it as quickly as possible.