Current Priorities

The Isle of Wight Council Trading Standards Service is guided by the local needs of Isle of Wight Residents and Businesses. It still has overriding priorities which were set by central government following the 1999 White Paper “Modern Markets, Confident Consumers”. These priorities are:

These are translated into five priorities for the Service locally:

These priorities fall into three of the identified eight key priorities for 2011-2013 contained in the Isle of Wight Council Corporate Plan. They are:

These priorities reflect the Government’s view that “Trading Standards Services play a key role in the community; helping consumers tackle unfair and unsafe trade practices and providing support for business. It is crucial ..... that Trading Standards provide a high quality, consistent, responsive service”. It can also be observed that the thrust of the four priorities is not specifically directed towards use of sanctions as a means to achieve success and that consumer and business education are seen as important.

Trading Standards are seen as playing a critical role in protecting consumers and businesses in their local authority areas especially with regard to rogue traders. A National Trading Standards Board has been created to provide additional funding and mechanisms to strengthen cross-boundary working. This is particularly important with scams and rogue traders who operate throughout the country. The Board will fund, and coordinate national and cross-boundary enforcement cases. They will be developing a system to bring together intelligence from around the country to improve the ability to combat rogue traders. They will create and develop expert teams to tackle priorities such as internet scams, and illegal money lending and other enforcement issues that go beyond local authority boundaries.

The Government is committed to promoting growth in the UK economy and empowering and protecting consumers is a vital element of this approach. In 2011 a consultation, Empowering and protecting Consumers, proposed a number of approaches to tackle this. As a consequence of this consultation the Consumer Direct service to consumers giving advice on consumer issues nationally has been passed to Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland. This effectively means that they are now responsible for providing consumer advice to consumers nationally in just the same way that Consumer Direct had for the past 10 years. Locally the Trading Standards Service is working in partnership with the local Citizens Advice Bureau to ensure a joined up and consistent quality of service for local consumers looking at local priorities which for the Trading Standards Service concentrates on vulnerable residents. It is important that the Service works with many agencies and voluntary organisations to prevent abuse. Abuse is any action that harms another person.


The Isle of Wight Trading Standards Service puts great emphasis on the education of both consumers and businesses and all of the work of the Service is carried out on an intelligence led, risk assessed basis. The Service is fully supportive of the drive to reduce the burdens on legitimate businesses and no business will be inspected unless there is a reason to do so. However, where enforcement action is found to be necessary, it is undertaken in accordance with the Regulatory Services Enforcement Policy, the Regulators’ Compliance Code, the Enforcement Concordat and the Code for Crown Prosecutors. The overriding principle being that action must be proportionate. Inspection is carried out where this is high risk, for example where high value commodities such as liquid fuel are sold. It is worth emphasising that many traders have indicated that they value this work, both from an economic viewpoint and as a means of updating themselves on trading standards issues and laws.

The Trading Standards Service has a duty to enforce a wide range of legislation, including 35 primary Acts of Parliament, around 40 supplementary Acts with further responsibility under some civil legislation. In addition there are more than 1000 related Statutory Instruments. All of the legislation relates to commercial activity.

The key areas covered by Trading Standards legislation (in alphabetical order) are:

The staff of the Isle of Wight Trading Standards Service staff now equate to 7.46 full time equivalents. None of the officers in the Service are regarded as purely “Enforcers”. Because of qualifications and experience most are, of course, able to take enforcement action where appropriate, but the main thrust of the Service is to bring about compliance for the good of consumers and businesses, and all officers have a role to play in this process. Intelligence is used as a means to determine where consumer and business education should be directed, and where initiatives can be used to address particular needs or unsatisfactory trade practices.

Examples of Trading Standards work aimed at meeting the Service’s priorities are:

Julie Woodhouse
Principal Officer Trading Standards
August 2012