Shailesh Vara MP recently visited Whirlpool UK Appliances Ltd, who are based in Peterborough, to discuss the company’s plans to deal with the safety of its tumble dryers. This follows concerns about the dryers being a potential fire hazard.

Mr Vara met with the company’s General Manager for the UK & Ireland, Mr Maurizio Pettorino, and Marketing Director, Mrs Fiona Hope. Mr Pettorino assured Mr Vara that the company is taking the issue very seriously and has already contacted over 3.6 million individual UK households who potentially own an affected tumble dryer.

Following an appeal by the company, approximately 1.5 million people have contacted Whirlpool and more are continuing to do so on a daily basis. There are however, nearly 2 million others who still need to contact the company so that their dryers can be checked and registered to be modified.

Mr Vara along with Mr Pettorino and Mrs Hope agreed on the importance of the public being made aware of the issue and also for affected members of the public to contact the company to seek a safety assurance and they discussed ways to take this forward.

Following the meeting Mr Vara said:

“I was pleased to have an update from Mr Pettorino regarding this very serious matter and to hear that the company is taking the necessary steps to safeguard its customer’s safety. There is still a lot more to be done so that all concerned have been properly notified and that they have then made contact with the company so that the safety aspect of the tumble dryers can be dealt with.

I would encourage anyone who has been contacted by Whirlpool and is yet to register their details to get in touch with the company. This can be done either by visiting their dedicated websites at http://safety.hotpoint.eu or http://.safety.indesit.eu or calling their dedicated helpline on 0800 151 0905 following which if their dryer is affected then an engineer will attend their property to modify it free of charge.

Mr Pettorino added:

“I’d like to thank Mr Vara for meeting with me to discuss our ongoing modification programme. Here at Whirlpool, we are taking all possible steps to ensure we are supporting our customers to good effect and that we are working single-mindedly to resolve all cases quickly and safely.

I would personally like to echo Mr Vara’s call for any customers who are worried they might have an affected machine to contact customer services on the details provided or register their machine online for a free modification.”