Boohoo has had a rocky start to 2024. After news that the fashion e-tail giant might close its flagship Midlands factory, it now stands accused of putting ‘Made in the UK’ labels on potentially thousands of clothes that were made in South Asia.

That’s according to the BBC programme Panorama, but it’s a charge that Boohoo has denied.

Plain T-shirts and hoodies had their original labels removed at Boohoo‘s flagship factory, Thurmaston Lane in Leicester, last year. Boohoo said the incorrect labels were down to a misinterpretation of the labelling rules.

The mislabelling took place at the factory, affecting up to one in 250 of Boohoo‘s global supply of garments between January and October 2023.

The BBC estimates that this could amount to hundreds of thousands of wrongly labelled garments. However, it said the retailer would not provide precise figures.

Boohoo claims it was an isolated incident that had happened as “a result of human error”. A company spokesperson said: “We have taken steps to ensure this does not happen again.”

The garments had been shipped from Pakistan and other countries in South Asia to Boohoo‘s Leicester factory where they were printed on.

Sylvia Rook, lead officer for fair trading at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, told the programme that based on information provided, replacing country-of-origin labels with ‘Made in the UK’ ones in this way was “incorrect” and “could potentially mislead consumers”.