Journal of Trading Standards December 2018

✚

Interview

Minister Kelly Tolhurst shares her future ambitions

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Cybercrime

Is current UK enforcement fit for this global epidemic?

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Weapons

Welcome changes are on their way, but resources lag

✚

Rogues

We review the success of a multi-agency campaign

Winter 2018 | www.journaloftradingstandards.co.uk

DATA CAPTURE Good intelligence matters more than ever for the trading standards profession

Product safety matters The Government has now made the BSI’s new Code of Practice on product safety and recalls available to SMEs for free.

Download yours now and make sure you understand what to do if something goes wrong with a product.

The Code of Practice PAS 7100:2018 comes in two parts.

The first part focuses on non-food consumer products and is for use by manufacturers, importers and distributors.

The second part is aimed at regulators, such as local authority trading standards teams. It sets out how they can help businesses to meet their responsibilities around consumer product safety issues.

The Journal of Trading Standards is providing a link direct to the report here:

www.jtsmag.uk/productrecalls

To read the Office for Product Safety and Standards strategy document, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-for-product-safety-and-standards

The Journal of Trading Standards wInteR 2018

Leader

Raising our profile

Editor-in-Chief:

Eleni Chalkidou Editor:

Paul Evans

Trading Standards is all about people. That’s why it’s such a great honour to be chosen as the new Chair of CTSI. Talking to people is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job, and I believe it is extremely important to be on hand to answer members’ questions, to respond to their concerns, and to David Riley maintain an active role in the vital everyday work of trading Chair, CTSI standards. Regularly visiting the branches to give updates on the work of CTSI will play a big part in achieving that aim.

I believe that a central element of the Chair’s role is raising the profile of trading standards with the public, politicians and other colleagues within the regulatory landscape. But most importantly, I want to use the opportunity of my chairmanship to raise the “I am proud and excited to be profile of trading standards following in the footsteps of many within the profession itself the work we do is of real of my heroes within the profession” –value to society, and is essential to ensuring public safety and consumer rights. We should never forget that, and we should all feel a sense of pride in our profession and the vital work we do.

The next year or so presents us with significant challenges and opportunities, including the questions that Brexit raises over a broad swathe of trading standards issues, the establishment of a new working relationship between CTSI and Safety & Standards, and proposed changes to professional qualifications and membership categories.

These will be among my primary areas of focus, and I will do my utmost to represent the profession and its best interests during this potentially difficult period.

I see my new role as the pinnacle of my career within Trading Standards, and I am proud and excited to be following in the footsteps of many of my heroes within the profession. I relish the opportunity to meet colleagues old and new during my time as chair, and I am determined to enjoy every minute of it.

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

Designer:

Sam Millard Reprographics:

Robin Sloan Lead Developer:

Michael Sadler Videographer:

Panji Kaonga Writers:

Helen Nugent, Mansoor Iqbal, Richard Young, Will Hatchett

Article suggestions and feedback should be sent to: Paul Evans, Editor editor@JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

The Journal of Trading Standards magazine and website are produced on contract by Fourth Estate Creative Ltd. www.fourthestatecreative.com connect@fourthestatecreative.com Printed in the UK by Manson Group Distributed by Gold Key Media Published by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, 1 Sylvan Court, Sylvan Way, Southfields Business Park, Basildon SS15 6TH. www.tradingstandards.uk 01268 582 200 © 2018, Chartered Trading Standards Institute. All rights reserved.

Views expressed by the authors are not necessarily the views of CTSI.

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Matt Allwright Matt is a journalist and presenter of the BBC’s watchdog and Rogue traders.

Craig McClue Craig is Head of Policy at CtSI.

e D I tO R I A L B OA R D

COLUMnIStS

Editorial

Leon Livermore

David Riley

Malcolm Craig

Chief Executive, CTSI

Chair, CTSI Programme Manager, NTS

Immediate Past Chair, CTSI

After 25 years in local government, Leon joined the Chartered trading Standards Institute as its Chief executive in 2013.

David has more than 30 years’ experience in the profession and became Chair in September 2018.

Malcolm has 17 years’ experience working across trading standards services in Scotland and was Chair from September 2017-18.

Ben Richards Ben is Campaigns and Policy executive at CtSI.

Sara Barry

Damien Doherty

David MacKenzie

Head of Safer Communities, Lincolnshire CC

Chief Inspector for Northern Ireland Trading Standards Service

Trading Standards Manager, Highland Council

C O n t R I B U tO R S

Sara is Former Chair of the CtSI and has led Lincolnshire CC through major budget cuts.

Damien has 16 years’ experience and focuses on scams and doorstep crime.

David is a CTSI Lead Officer for e-Commerce with 27 years’ experience in the trading standards profession.

LEGAL

Mike Andrews National Trading Standards Mike is the lead co-ordinator for the national trading Standards eCrime team.

ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Prof Louise M Hassan

Phil Owen

Gareth Walters

Christine Heemskerk

Service Director (Prof. Standards), CTSI

Manager, Monmouthshire Trading Standards Service

Independent Consultant

Phil has experience across private, public and not-forprofit sectors with a focus on regulatory outcomes.

A CTSI Fellow since 2013, Gareth is Branch Secretary for wales and Chair of the welsh Animal Health Panel.

Christine is a self-employed consultant to the trading standards profession and a CTSI Lead Officer for Product Safety.

Professor of Consumer Psychology, Bangor Business School

Louise has extensive experience in modelling consumers’ reactions to behavioural change interventions.

CPPD

Andy Allen Director of Operations, CTSI Andy comes from a consumer protection background and has led the CtSI’s eCC since 2013.

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

Prof Louise M Hassan

Eleni Chalkidou

Paul Evans

Professor of Consumer Psychology, Bangor Business School

Editor-in-Chief and Director of Communications, CTSI

Editor and Managing Director, Fourth Estate Creative

eleni joined CtSI in May 2017 bringing a wealth of comms experience across business, law and publishing.

Paul has worked across books, newspapers, magazines, web and video in an 18-year media career.

Louise specialises in understanding consumer protection issues.

| 05

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Contents REGULARS

08 | Upfront

Our regular look at the light and the dark of the profession, along with a snapshot of the activity of TSOs from around the UK.

13 | Allwright Now Matt asks if we should give serial rogue traders the oxygen of publicity.

COVER STORY

FEATURE

16

20

Intelligence-Led Model Mansoor Iqbal looks at the development of intelligence in trading standards and asks whether it’s just a matter of necessity.

Cybercrime and under-reporting As cybercrime continues to grow, figures resist reliable measurement with so many victims unable or unwilling to report.

FEATURE

FEATURE

26

30

14 | Think Piece Craig McClue tries to reconcile the ‘end of austerity’with the current landscape of the trading standards profession.

24 | Academic Research Louise Hassan looks at the role consumers themselves, and the corporations who sell to them, can play in reducing harm online.

34 | Think Piece

The Government has called for a ‘strong national body’. Ben Richards argues it must be willing to engage at the local level.

36 | Operation Rogue Trader

We lay out the facts and figures reflecting this successful multi-agency campaign.

Doorstep crime and its victims Without more enforcement resources, doorstep criminals will continue to prey on the isolated and vulnerable in society.

Taking back control of weapons The new weapons bill is a long-overdue response to violent crime, but how will it be enforced by a beleaguered profession?

INTERVIEW

FEATURE

40

44

48 | CPPD This issue’s CPPD module brings you up to speed on Alternative Dispute Resolution.

52 | Legal

National Trading Standards shares the story of Operation Dougal, one of the UK’s biggest online crime investigations.

50 | Last Word

This issue Eleni Chalkidou asks where would we be without... hallmarking.

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

In conversation with: Kelly Tolhurst Our second consumer minister of the year tells us what she wants to do to keep momentum going on product safety.

Hunting Walter Mitty We expose the trade in counterfeit military medals and how the MOD and trading standards are helping to shut it down.

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The Journal of Trading Standards winTer 2018

Upfront 60 SECONDS

BREXIT

SuRgE IN REquEStS fOR cONSuMER advIcE A huge 51% more UK consumers asked for help last year from the UK ECC to deal with complaints linked to EU traders. In addition to receiving more requests for advice, the centre also topped the number of phone calls it received from UK consumers from the previous year by 16%.

BuSINESSES BRIEfEd ON MOdERN SLavERy A scheme has launched in the South west, to enlist trusted local businesses in the fight against modern-day slavery. it follows data released by the national Crime Agency that there were 5,145 potential victims of human trafficking and modern-day slavery in 2017, a 35% increase on 2016.

caLL fOR Law chaNgE ON hygIENE RatINgS Half of businesses in england do not display their food hygiene ratings in their premises, it has been revealed. The LGA is calling for all businesses serving food in england, including online food delivery outlets, to be forced to display food hygiene ratings to drive up hygiene standards.

Brexit think tank Update With the countdown to the UK’s departure from the EU continuing, the Brexit Think Tank has raised many important questions as yet unanswered.

£0.5M kNIfE cRIME cOuRt vIctORy A joint investigation by Barking & Dagenham and redbridge Trading Standards has led to a successful prosecution against B&M retail and an order to pay more than £490,000 in relation to three offences of underage sales of knives. Staff had sold knives to teenagers as young as 14.

08 |

MORE ONLINE The Brexit Think Tanks’s full report and summary booklet are available to view on the Journal of Trading Standards website at: www.journaloftradingstandards .co.uk/brexit.

in order to consider the potential outcomes, risks and opportunities for trading standards, CTSi gathered together subject matter experts in the nine broad areas most influenced by EU membership to form the Brexit Think Tank. in September, the think tank released its findings in a report titled Trading Standards Opportunities and Threats from the UK Withdrawal from the EU. The full report was also summarised in a printed booklet that was presented to MPs and Ministers at a special reception at the House of Commons. in it, the Brexit experts expressed concerns that business confidence would be fundamentally weakened following

Britain’s exit from the EU if current regulatory, enforcement and advice partnerships were not maintained.

Head of Policy at CTSi, Craig McClue, said: “we have brought forward concerns from extensive research by leaders across the breadth of trading standards activities. The Government has set an ambition of no less protection for consumers and high standards of regulation when we leave the EU. This report demonstrates our concerns about such ambitions being realised”.

The key networks and regulations covered in the report are still in peril, with crucial questions around Brexit as yet unanswered at the time going to press.

Winter 2018

The Journal of Trading Standards winter 2018

BREAK DOWN

“Tackling knife and gang crime is one of the Met’s top priorities, and we are working closely with trading standards, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and retailers to do everything we can to prevent young people getting hold of knives in the first place.”

Sean Yates Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent

40,100

Crimes involving a knife or sharp object in England and Wales in the year to March 2018

21%

The proportion of knife crimes committed by juveniles (aged 10-17) in 2017/18

2,593

Underage test purchases carried out by Trading Standards in London over an 18-month period

13

The age of the youngest child able to buy a knife during one of London Trading Standards’ tests.

“We are disappointed that a thirteenyear-old has been allowed to buy a knife in a London shop but we note the relatively high levels of compliance among the majority of retailers. We would encourage retailers to continue to sign up to Responsible Retailer Schemes and work with us to help prevent children from being allowed to buy age-restricted goods.”

Trish Burls | trading Standards Manager for Croydon and London lead officer for knife crime

‘tis the season…

With Christmas just around the corner, trading standards officers up and down the country are working to ensure that consumers’ festive fun isn’t ruined by unsafe goods and the actions of irresponsible traders.

Grizzly end More than 1,000 dangerous teddy bears imported from China and uncovered by Peterborough Trading Standards officers in a pre-Christmas inspection have been seized and destroyed. the not-so-cuddly toys were poorly constructed, with loose eyes and noses that presented a choking hazard to younger children.

Tipple effect

Last Christmas

A joint operation between trading standards, HMrC and local police has been set up in tayside to protect the public during the festive season. As part of Operation respectful, officers are visiting licensed premises to remind staff of their responsibilities, before the surge in alcohol consumption across the Christmas period.

in the 2017 festive season more than 4,000 items worth more than £130,000 were seized across wales by trading standards officers. Over the course of 39 raids, items believed to be fake, including toys, clothes, footwear and cosmetics were removed from sale. this year consumers are being urged to be ‘alert and aware’.

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

The real deal A campaign is underway in Flintshire to protect consumers from buying fake goods via social media in the run-up to Christmas. Under the real Deal Online programme, tSOs are contacting local buying-and-selling groups to remind them of their responsibilities, and asking them to follow the programme code of practice.

Lighting up As householders across the UK dust off the decorations and prepare to deck the halls, rooftops and gardens, shoppers buying lights are warned to make sure they display the Ce mark, a manufacturer’s mark and a threepin plug. Charity electrical Safety First recommends LeD lights, which are safer and consume less energy.

| 09

The Journal of Trading Standards WINTER 2018

Upfront

Voices From The FronT Line

Stephanie Young STAffoRDShIRE CouNTy CouNCIL

What determines your priorities today?

My priorities are to deliver key services as determined by the local authority business plan.

What are those priorities?

The vision for the LA is that residents of the county have access to good jobs and feel the benefits of economic growth, they are healthier and more independent and feel safer, happier and more supported in and by their community. To achieve this, my priorities are to ensure that my team enforces all relevant matters relating to the protection of the food chain from farm to fork and that we are suitably prepared to deal with any incident that may compromise the vision of the LA. What takes up most of your time?

Most of my time is taken up engaging with stakeholders locally, regionally and nationally to help identify the threats and to ensure optimum benefits for service delivery.

What do you wish you had more time for?

I wish I had more time in the day. With agile working and reduced travelling this is becoming more achievable.

10 |

What have you done differently over the last year?

In the last 12 months I have really focussed my team towards the greater use of intelligence in the delivery of the service. Greater emphasis is placed on identifying the threats and how these can be addressed in a world of reduced resource.

How do you make the most of limited resources?

To make the most of reduced resource, it is important to have sufficient intelligence to understand the threats and ensure that there is an inclusive culture for shared ownership with stakeholders to help achieve the vision of the LA.

What has stayed the same across your career?

The passion and enthusiasm that I hold for the profession and ensuring that I get involved to help make that difference has remained throughout my career.

What makes the geographical area you cover difficult?

The LA is the 5th largest county in England, and is a landlocked rural shire authority with over 800,000 residents, as size does matter!

“I wish I had more time in the day.

With agile working and reduced travelling this is becoming more achievable.”

What’s the most useful thing you’ve learned in the last year?

Don’t be afraid to look outside the box for an answer!

What would you do differently if you had the year again?

If I had the year again, I would try and be more organised in collating the evidence for my CTSP and not leave it until last minute!

Winter 2018

The Journal of Trading Standards WINTER 2018

We asked trading standards officers and managers around the UK, closely involved in the day-to-day activities of the profession, for a snapshot of trading standards from their perspective. Below is a selection. Read more answers, or submit your own, online.

Christopher Bell CITy Of EdINBURgH COUNCIL

What determines your priorities today?

Planned work sits alongside response/complaint work, and every officer will be running their own investigations whilst assisting others’ to deliver theirs. We operate within so many areas of policy that priorities can change in response to a single telephone call.

What are those priorities?

Local, Regional, and National (Scotland & UK) priorities change, sometimes very quickly.

Response-based issues will often take precedence, such as doorstep crime, as we have to take the opportunity to intervene whilst the incident is ongoing. Otherwise, it’s about trying to maximise our effectiveness against potential harm, so product safety is something I spend a lot of time on.

What takes up most of your time?

We focus on importers relating to product safety, so I spend a lot of time doing this.

What do you wish you had more time for?

Having extra time to take stock, and celebrate (internally and externally) what we achieve would be great.

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

What have you done differently over the last year?

We have been liaising closely with SPOCPorts and Borders team to guide our work at the local airport. We have also been developing a methodology to reflect more accurately what value we deliver in relation to product safety.

What has stayed the same across your career?

The enthusiasm of colleagues to take a problem (almost any problem), see the trading standards context, and progress it.

“Response-based issues will often take precedence... as we have to take the opportunity to intervene whilst the incident is ongoing.”

How do you make the most of limited resources?

Collaboration. One of the greatest strengths of this community is officers’ willingness to support one another by sharing knowledge, skills and resources. I have experienced first hand that this goodwill extends UK wide. This can go relatively unnoticed, but it’s absolutely critical.

What makes the geographical area you cover difficult?

Edinburgh is a very compact but diverse city, with many neighbouring authorities, which can be crossed into relatively quickly. Issues can become ‘cross-border’ very quickly.

What’s the most useful thing you’ve learned in the last year?

Our work with SPOC Ports and Borders – we’ve been keen to hear from them about what works, and what doesn’t.

What would you do differently if you had the year again?

I’d involve partner agencies in a particular ongoing investigation sooner.

| 11

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Allwright Now

Matt Allwright Matt is a journalist and presenter of the BBC’s Watchdog and Rogue Traders

The Battle for Hearts, Minds and Kitchens Matt calls to mind the controversial kitchen Trader making monkeys of us all

He was, in the modern parlance of the Trump era, ‘doubling down’ on his terrible reputation to become a larger-than-life character, the sort of person that gets thrown into the Big Brother house or the jungle to ‘stir things up a bit’

Want to feed back on this issue’s article?

Post your thoughts on the JTS Twitter Feed @jts_editorial using the hashtags #AllwrightNow #Allwright_on_Notoriety

Winter 2018

One of the headlines of the NTS Consumer Harm Report in particular caught my eye: a kitchen fraud operation worth millions brought to justice resulting in convictions and jail time for the main players. I knew there could be only one name involved - and looking through the detail I was not disappointed. My old sparring partner Vance Miller had once again been held up to account for his habit of leaving people with nothing on which to cook their tea, despite having taken thousands of pounds of their money. I’ve had plenty of dealings with Vance over the years. In fact, at one point he was getting almost as much TV time as I was. In addition to our frequent confrontations (I’d turn up in an armoured personnel carrier; he’d read out a political statement against the licence fee, then jab me up the nose with a biro) he also starred in his own documentary, The Kitchen Gangster.

After a while, I decided to stop covering Vance. It became clear to me that not only was Vance enjoying our moments together, they were becoming part of his marketing strategy for his own personal brand. The Vance Miller legend was becoming the story, rather than the hundreds of homeowners who he’d let down, and the misery that brought. He was, in the modern parlance of the Trump era, ‘doubling down’ on his terrible reputation to become a larger-than-life character, the sort of person that gets thrown into the Big Brother house or the jungle to ‘stir things up a bit’.

Modern media loves these disruptive characters, and, as an audience, we are prepared to allow them all sorts of moral leeway because, however much distress they’re causing, their story is entertaining and consistently simple: for whatever reason, they are who they are, and make

no apologies for being so. He was using our interviews to build his myth - boasting about how many people he employed locally, how he traded with China, and how he worked twice as many hours in the day as the people who were trying to stop him.

Having met those who had lost out to him, I didn’t really want to be a part of that.

Vance was a tricky proposition. Clearly his spinning wheel of business names meant that the harm caused by his companies wasn’t going to stop, and yet by covering him I felt I was serving to build his brand.

I decided to step away from Vance so that he didn’t have the oxygen to build his reputation any further - but I was aware that by doing so there were always going to be viewers who didn’t know about the latest (there have been so many) incarnation of his shonky kitchen outfit, and who would shell out money as a result. I still don’t know if that was the right thing to do. In fact, I don’t know exactly how we deal with Rogues who embrace that identity wholeheartedly with the risk of prison and the publicity that comes with it, casting us in the role of dogooders and stale voices of authority. Yes, we need to prosecute, but we also need to have wider public support for what we do, don’t we? Characters like Vance challenge that support, which underpins everything. I’d love to know what you think.

| 13

Think Piece

Is austerity at an end?

Its impacts are not The ideology of austerity has had a critical and possibly irreversible impact on trading standards and local government services. Reports that it is coming to an end will be a hollow consolation for struggling local services

Craig McClue Craig McClue is Head of Policy at CTSI

This drastic decline of local service budgets was perhaps made easier by the anti-regulation and ‘burden on business’ agenda, one that seems so hollow after recent tragic regulatory failures.

14 |

“A decade after the financial crash, people need to know that the austerity it led to is over and that their hard work has paid off.”

I imagine that particular part of the Prime Minister’s 2018 Tory Conference speech echoing around empty trading standards offices across the country.

Maybe it caught the ear of one of the few remaining officers who then peered disbelievingly around at 10 years’ worth of former colleagues’ empty desks.

The government’s austerity policy was never intended to cut trading standards by over a half – that’s just what happened.

This drastic decline of local service budgets was perhaps made easier by the anti-regulation and ‘burden on business’ agenda, one that seems so hollow after recent tragic regulatory failures.

A decade ago, as we watched overleveraged American bankers carrying boxes from the collapsed Lehman Brothers in 2008, who could have predicted a ‘butterfly effect’ where UK trading standards would partly pay the 10year austerity price of their follies?

Consumer protection crisis But does it really matter? Well, with UK fraud at record and epidemic proportions, tumble dryers causing house fires, elderly and vulnerable consumers being targeted by scammers - not least the horrific sight of a high-rise building ablaze - it’s hard

not to conclude that, yes, regulation and consumer protection might just matter.

This crisis is not going unnoticed outside dwindling trading standards circles. CTSI has no political colour, but the recent ‘health-check’ by Andrew Gwynne (Shadow Labour Communities and Local Government Minister) found services are now a ‘husk’ of what they once were - paving the way for rogue traders to peddle fake goods, scams and unsafe products with ease.

Warnings too from organisations such as Age UK, whose report into tackling scams and fraud against elderly citizens found more than two-fifths (43%) of older people – almost 5 million people aged 65 and over – believe they have been targeted by scammers. Their assessment was frank, “If the Government wants to make tackling fraud a real priority it must ensure trading standards services have the resources they need”.

I abhor the pithy phrase ‘do more with less’ continually levelled as some kind of solution for services facing this situation. It implies that efficient means of service delivery were not being sought until they were financially forced. While many services are on their financial knees and struggling to carry out core functions - they are often then kicked again by different organisations for not fully carrying out the masses

Winter 2018

Journal of Trading Standards

of enforcement duties that come from central government.

No recovery without reinvestment But let’s not paint a completely dystopian picture. The Office of Product Safety and Standards is an important first step in the right direction. It’s having an early positive impact through enhanced training and greater support for local services from the centre. Good news too as the National Trading Standards Consumer Harm Report revealed that NTS prevented more than £182 million of losses to consumers and business in 2017/18, a rise of more than a third compared to the previous year.

The question remains though, have local services been cut too deep to ever return to full effectiveness? And, without drastic change, where might another 10 years of retiring staff and underinvestment leave the fitness of local trading standards services? With Brexit likely to add significant new challenges and the Local Governement Association predicting a funding gap shortfall for

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

local government services of £8bn by 2025 - it’s hard to remain positive.

While this goes on, the ‘new law tap’ for trading standards still flows unabated (and rightly so!) From the Home Office there are vital policies to tackle knife crime and acid attacks. From DEFRA there are important plans to tackle plastic pollution - curbing their needless use in microbeads or straws and stirrers. The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government too wishes the help of trading standards to prevent the sale of explosive precursors (the chemicals that can be put together to make bombs).

We can never try to argue that such initiatives are not vital for UK consumers and citizens, but the ‘do more with less’ mantra has its limits. If the government is serious about new duties it needs to (across Whitehall) better understand trading standards’ plight and find ways to fund crucial enforcement initiatives.

Post-Brexit standards Is austerity really over for trading standards? Well, while political

commentators disagree over the broader issues, the forecasts for local government budgets remain bleak. The big question is likely to remain for many years yet, ‘how can stretched and cut trading standards services find a way to fund existing and new responsibilities placed upon them?’

Over the winter the consumer green paper presents a big opportunity for change. Proposals to strengthen the national and local enforcement framework need to have a ‘whole system’ approach that takes the pressure off local services.

It is important too that local and national enforcement bodies have the clout to really hold multi-million-pound businesses to account when required.

Finally, if things remain as they are, when the UK seeks new trade deals after March of 2019 there is likely to be stocktake of our capacity to maintain high standards of regulatory compliance and consumer protection. Might Brexit be the time when the loss of trading standards’ critical mass is mourned, too long after the masses of critical voices against the cuts have been heard.

| 15

Intelligence-led model

by Mansoor Iqbal

Intelligence Quotient The intelligence-led model - mostly simply defined as using intelligence (information + analysis) to guide operations rather than the other way around - has not been ushered in to the trading standards profession with universal assent. The model is a well-established strategic practice though and for many it means a shift towards, not away from, proactivity

16 |

Winter 2018

Journal of Trading Standards

In any industry which is built upon deep expertise and tried-and-tested methods, changes in approach can be a contentious issue. It can be particularly problematic when it seems like that change is based on external constraints.

On the other hand, conservatism can be equally problematic when faced with a changing field of play. And while no-one likes to be told to do more with less, in the right circumstances such thinking can foster a culture of greater efficiency.

Introducing new, modern methods can be key in remaining alive to evolving challenges, and simply getting more bang for your buck.

This is the debate around the shift toward an intelligence-led model by trading standards framed in the broadest possible terms. The fear is that utilising such an approach, as opposed to traditional market surveillance, would see trading standards moving from a proactive to a reactive approach.

These are the very words in which the 2015 report The Impact of Local Authority Trading Standards in Challenging Times, produced by the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Local Government Studies for the then Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Chartered Trading Standards Institute, couches the issue.

The fear within the sector as outlined

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

in the report centres on the forcing of change by cuts. With constrained resources, officers feel forced into working based on consumer complaints and other intelligence reports, rather than being out in the field, carrying out systematic and planned inspections and checks. Efficiency in this context has a sinister edge, serving as little more than a euphemism for funding cuts.

A more proactive approach Is this what an intelligence-led approach signifies, then? Not really, says Jacqueline Jeffrey, who worked as an intelligence analyst for Trading Standards Scotland between September 2014 to May 2017, helping them to effect the transition to an intelligence-led model. For her, this was about moving away from reactivity.

“What we tried to do is encourage a more proactive approach…trying to identify things that were going to become

The National Intelligence Model is a business model that actually allows you to better understand the issues that you’re facing and make informed decisions around them

an issue and taking a preventative approach, tackling them before they become much bigger and require a much bigger response. Just tackling rogue traders is not an effective use of resource.

If you can understand the modus operandi and the loopholes, you can potentially influence regulatory change, which longer term is a more efficient and effective way to tackle the issue’.

Horizon scanning plays a significant role in achieving this – reading the news and looking to consumer groups in order to understand what’s going on in other authorities or other counties and setting intelligence requirements to pre-empt emerging issues.

Different times In her role, Jeffrey was responsible for helping to introduce the ‘National Intelligence Model’ (NIM). She says the main resistance she encountered in trying to do so was the fear that it was an attempt to turn trading standards into an offshoot of the police, where the model had previously been championed. Indeed, Jeffrey’s own background was with Police Scotland and the Strathclyde Police, at which she served as an analyst manager.

It is not the case, however, that the NIM is a law enforcement model. “The National Intelligence Model is a business model that actually allows you to better

| 17

Intelligence-led model

by Mansoor Iqbal

understand the issues that you’re facing and make informed decisions around them. From a tactical perspective, it informs enforcement activity, and from a strategic viewpoint it allows you to look at issues more holistically, to understand what was going on in the wider environment, how that could impact you as a service, what you must do thereafter to stay in line with that.”

The central ethos is the successful management of resources to best achieve trading standards’ key objectives: the prevention, management, and control of consumer detriment and exploitation. Part of the reason why this shift is necessary is the changing of the theatre of operations in which trading standards functions. “There has been a proliferation of online sales in recent years, coupled with a decline in highstreet retailers,” says Jeffrey. “This has essentially changed the role of trading standards. Officers are expected to tackle digital platforms that have misleading information, are scamming consumers, or selling illicit goods. In this case, there is not necessarily a physical premises for officers to inspect, which can make the process that bit more problematic.”

This has created a skills gap, she observes, something Trading Standards Scotland addressed with an e-crime training package.

The right kind of efficiency This brings us back to efficiency – both the elephant in the room and the operational virtue to which all good organisations – especially those contingent on the public purse – are obligated to strive. There’s no escaping the fact that the purse strings have been tightened, thus creating extra impetus to strive for efficiency. At the same time, to aspire to get the best possible results with whatever level of resource you command is surely not too outlandish a thing to ask of any well-run operation.

Clare Forbes is a trading standards and regulatory consultant, who worked for 12 years for West Yorkshire Trading Standards, and currently consults with Ashfords LLP as well as the National

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EXPLAINED: The 5x5x5 model The 5x5x5 model is part of the National Intelligence Model as used by the police to assess the value and sharing of a piece of information.

The first two fives refer to scores on a scale given to the source of the information, without assessing the information itself (free of bias or personal feelings) and the data itself, looking at the circumstances in which it was collected.

As a rule, only data scored B2 – at least the secondhighest score for each of these – is considered worthwhile. The final five refers to the handling code that governs to whom the information can be disseminated, based on a risk assessment. In this model, these tend towards limiting the people with whom information can be shared.

Trading Standards Scams Team and North Yorkshire County Council. She also helped bring in an intelligence-led approach, and questions the orthodoxy of the traditional market surveillance model that sees businesses inspected based on type, regardless of whether or not they had proven themselves to be consistently compliant in the past.

“Some inspections were unnecessary; the businesses weren’t profiting.

Certainly [NIM] is a way to eliminate these visits, and the unnecessary burdens on businesses. It allows trading standards to use limited resources to target things that are really important.”

One key way in which an intelligence-led approach affords greater efficiency in the positive sense of that word - is creating a culture of collaboration, both within different regional authorities and with external organisations.

Speaking the same language One key way in which an intelligenceled approach affords greater efficiency - in the positive sense of that word - is creating a culture of collaboration, both within different regional authorities and with external organisations.

“Really, it’s a shift to be in line with other enforcement agencies, like the police,” says Forbes. “From our point of view, we were finding other agencies weren’t engaging with us unless we were talking in terms of intelligence reports.”

This, she adds, put an onus on officers to ensure they were recording intelligence.

Jeffrey echoes this: “Intelligence allows for you to understand an issue, and provides a mechanism for allowing information to be shared between organisations in support of common goals. It is only by understanding issues that you are able to identify opportunities for working in partnership.”

She gives the example of Scottish Crime Campus – a Scottish Government initiative to enhance collaboration between various anti-crime agencies.

These include Police Scotland, HMRC, the National Crime Agency, and other enforcement/regulatory agencies

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Journal of Trading Standards

including Trading Standards Scotland.

This helped to raise the profile of trading standards as an interventions partner, working alongside other agencies using consumer protection regulations to help tackle the threat posed from serious organised crime. This partnership working allowed for economies of scale, where there were cross-cutting issues such as illicit trade or doorstop crime.

Inter-agency cooperation allowed, for instance, the addressing of the issue of doorstep fish sales, through a Trading Standards Scotland-led initiative, supported by Police Scotland and local trading standards teams. The issue was found to be seasonal, taking place chiefly over autumn and winter months.

With this intelligence in hand, Trading Standards Scotland were able to create a problem profile and guidance on legislative options. Taking a preventative and proactive approach that involved the local press, instances fell over 60% the following year, and arrests were effected around the Scottish borders.

Fostering a data culture In order for an intelligence-led approach to be successfully implemented, it’s

essential that a data-sharing culture is cultivated. Tom Symons is Acting Head of Government Innovation at innovation foundation Nesta, and works around data and local government.

There are three things he believes are necessary to foster such a culture: senior level buy-in, information governance expertise, and a clear sense of what you’re trying to achieve with the data.

The senior level buy-in can help people to see that the risks of not sharing information can be equal to the perceived risks of sharing it, he explains. The information governance expertise, on the other hand, provides an understanding of the information-sharing gateways which can be afforded by legislation (a shift from 5x5x5 to 3x5x2- see box-outs - in information evaluation has also eased the process of sharing). The significance of the clear purpose is hopefully, well…clear.

Getting this culture in place can help to tackle one of the major charges levelled against the intelligence-led approach: relying on patchy reported data. There is richness to be found in the data to which local authorities have recourse, says Symons – particularly if this collaborative data-sharing approach is taken.

EXPLAINED: The 3x5x2 model

The 3x5x2 model streamlines the process, by reducing the source assessment to reliable, unreliable or untested (removing mostly and sometimes options), simplifies the wording in the information assessment, and, perhaps most importantly, changing the handling codes to make them more conducive to the sharing of information so long as it remains within the confines of the law.

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In order for an intelligence-led approach to be successfully implemented, it’s essential that a data-sharing culture is cultivated.

Jeffrey is alive to this issue too. Where gaps in intelligence are brought to light in the wake of horizon scanning, she explains, it can be seen to that the requisite intelligence is built in a targeted manner. The key here is ensuring that thorough horizon scanning takes place in order to address these gaps before the problematic behaviour arises.

The baby and the bathwater Ultimately, adopting a more intelligenceled approach does not mean we have to completely abandon market surveillance.

One needn’t completely preclude the other. “It’s important to stress this wouldn’t be a way to get rid of trading standards officers or trying to undermine their expertise,” says Symons. “Once you’ve been doing that job for some time, you have a second nature understanding of issues – you just might be able to enable them to achieve even better results with an intelligence-led approach.”

Indeed, Jeffrey stresses that intelligence is information that has been assessed – the latter stage calling for an expert human presence in the process.

For her too, market surveillance and the intelligence-led approach are essentially two sides of the same coin.

“Market surveillance and intelligence are not necessarily two disparate things.

Instead, embedding horizon scanning processes will enable you to identify emerging issues, allowing for a proactive, potentially preventative approach to be taken in order to stop something from becoming a much bigger issue. If you think back to the horse meat scandal – all the warning signs were there.”

While the reality of cost-cutting has coloured the debate, surely no one would argue that adding increasingly advanced prevention tools to trading standards’ arsenal is a bad thing.

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identity

20 |

Winter 2018

Cybercrime

by Helen Nugent

Journal of Trading Standards

crisis Cybercrime is growing year-on-year, but exact figures are hard to put a finger on since so many victims of online fraud are either unaware or unwilling to report. Crime fighters have their work cut out in cyberspace In a world where nine out of ten UK households have a computer, it’s perhaps no surprise that fraudsters are employing increasingly inventive ways to persuade people to part with their money online.

From dubious sales of wine, car parking spaces and burial plots to subscription traps and pension scams, cyber criminals lurk in every corner of the web.

Scrutiny of the statistics on cybercrime makes for depressing reading. According to banking and finance trade association UK Finance, scammers stole half a billion pounds from UK bank customers last year, while Action Fraud recently reported that 50,000 frauds were perpetrated against the over-60s during the same time period.

Pension fraud victims were very badly hit with a loss of around £91,000 each.

Meanwhile, the National Trading Standards eCrime Team cites data from Citizens Advice which found that threequarters of those surveyed had been targeted by scammers over a two-year

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period. The results indicated that more than a third had been singled out five or more times.

Nevertheless, people are often reluctant to admit they’ve been duped by fraudsters, as Mike Andrews, national coordinator of the eCrime Team, explains.

“We know that the problem of cybercrime is increasing year-on-year but the biggest challenge is trying to put some sort of measure on that. One of the most significant issues with online scams is the level of reporting. If you look at what’s reported directly, that’s only ever the tip of the iceberg.”

Consumer spending online has soared in recent years and sales via tablets and smartphones are booming. At the same time, the volume of junk email has rocketed. Online statistics portal Statista says that, as of March 2018, spam mail accounted for 48% of email traffic worldwide. That’s a lot of phoney African princes and bogus drugs companies, not to mention false promises of tax refunds.

“A significant and increasing proportion of consumers’ everyday lives is spent online,” says Andrews. “So the way in which consumers can be targeted is quite wide-ranging. A constant thorn in our side is the issue of subscription traps.

This is where consumers are offered what appears to be a fairly enticing offer – some sort of free or trial product, usually a health-based product such as weight loss or bodybuilding. They sign up thinking it’s free, they pay a small charge for administration and postage and packing, but what they have actually signed up for in the small print is a long-term commitment to purchase that product month-on-month. They then find

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Cybercrime

by Helen Nugent

themselves £70 or £80 out-of-pocket and often don’t realise for some months down the line. And most of these scams that we’ve seen originate overseas.”

Enforcement in the global village At present, trading standards has a number of powers at its disposal to tackle cybercrime. But they only relate to this country. Seeking out and prosecuting scams that emanate from abroad is an entirely different matter.

Andrews says: “If we can identify people responsible for an online crime and they’re UK-based then our powers are quite wide-ranging. We’ve probably got sufficient powers in that regard. We’ve got powers to investigate them, to gather evidence from them, and then charge them with appropriate offences which in many cases may well not just be trading standards consumer protection offences but fraud offences.

“The bigger challenge really is around the scams that come from overseas. Our powers don’t allow us to pursue people overseas, and the other options available to us which would be things like having websites taken down, we don’t have any legal ability to do that. We rely on the goodwill of internet service providers and web host companies where we highlight some sort of misdemeanour. It’s in their hands really as to whether those websites are taken down.”

As things currently stand when it comes to overseas offenders, trading standards has no legal means to compel web companies to deal with fraudulent websites or dodgy online sellers. “It’s a big ask but one thing that would make a big difference [to trading standards’ work] is more effective means by which we can get online content quickly removed, whether that’s websites taken down or stuff removed from social media platforms that might be misleading or fraudulent,” says Andrews.

Louise Baxter is CTSI Lead Officer for Consumer Advice & Education and head

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of the National Trading Standards Scams Team. Much of her job focuses on mass marketing mail scams, doorstep crime and telephone fraud. But, as she explains, one of her team’s main issues is that, if people are accessing technology, “we need to ensure that they have the skillset to be able to access the internet safely” She says: “One of the scams where we’ve seen an increase is around things like Bitcoin and similar scams. This is where people who are particularly vulnerable because of their circumstances or in a situation where they may be socially isolated and they haven’t got other people to talk to might be targeted by clever criminals who are asking them

Our pOwers dOn’t allOw us tO pursue peOple Overseas… we rely On the gOOdwill Of internet service prOviders and web hOst cOmpanies… it’s in their hands really as tO whether thOse websites are taken dOwn

147,235

PEOPLE SIGNED UP TO THE FRIENDS AGAINST SCAMS INITIATIVE SO FAR

43 years

OF CUSTODIAL SENTENCES SECURED

BY THE NTS ECRIME TEAM

to invest in that cryptocurrency and suggesting too-good-to-be-true offers.

Potentially there is a danger that we may be tackling effectively the mail scams, the doorstep crime and the telephone scams but we may see a shift to more cyber scams.”

Why victims don’t report Given the scale of online fraud and the prospect of further growth in this area, why are consumers so reticent about reporting online fraud? Embarrassment

is one major factor. After all, who wants to own up to being taken in by a conman?

For older people, it sometimes boils down to appearing vulnerable in front of their children as well as fears over future financial help with their care home fees.

Whatever the reason, it’s a situation which needs to change if more is to be done to tackle unscrupulous individuals and organisations.

Steve Playle, CTSI Lead Officer for Energy & Smart Meters, says that underreporting is also true of push-payment

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Journal of Trading Standards

50,000

FRAUDS PERPETRATED in 2017

£500m

STOLEn BY SCAMMERS in 2017

fraud. This describes something that the consumer sets in motion. In essence, it occurs when someone logs onto their online bank account and pushes a payment out to a person they choose to pay the money to.

“It’s vastly under-reported for a variety of reasons so whatever the stats say, you could probably times it by 10 or 20.

Sometimes people don’t like to admit that they’ve been a victim of a fraud.”

Push-payment (also known as APP – ‘authorised push payment’) is a particularly cruel scam, so practiced and nuanced that even the vigilant can be taken in. In many ways, it’s the modernday equivalent of a bank robber clad in a balaclava. Common tricks include persuading customers that fraud has been detected on their bank account and encouraging them to transfer their funds into a ‘safe’ account which, needless to say, is anything but.

Then there are the high-pressure sales reps who flog products or services which don’t exist, such as a car or a holiday rental, through auction websites or social media. And let’s not forget impersonation scams where criminals pretend to be reputable organisations, including the police or the taxman, in order to trick

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people into transferring money.

UK Finance estimates that more than 31,000 people lost nearly £145 million to insidious push-payment scams in the first six months of 2018. And the onus is on the consumer to deal with the fallout.

Playle says: “Once the money has gone to a fraudster, the chances of getting it back are very slim. In the City of London we do a lot of work on investment fraud.

We have something called Operation Broadway which is a multi-agency partnership between us, the police, HMRC and the Financial Conduct Authority. We sit down every two weeks and chat about the intelligence that has come through about people who have lost money to investment frauds. But very often, once the money has been paid out, you won’t get it back. It’s gone.”

We sit doWn every tWo Weeks and chat about the intelligence that has come through about people Who have lost money to investment frauds. but very often, once the money has been paid out, you Won’t get it back. it’s gone.

Family warning system Frustratingly, trading standards finds that victims often realise they have made an unwise investment decision too late, sometimes just a few hours after the money has disappeared from their bank account. The banking sector has, some claim, washed its hands of this type of fraud, preferring to absolve itself from responsibility.

In October, it was announced that, from 2019, name checks will be conducted when UK bank customers send money to other people. At present, banks don’t check if account names are correct. The move follows a Which? super-complaint on payment scams to the Payment Systems Regulator.

But Playle thinks more should be done. “The big plan, which I’ve been talking about for a few years, is that bank customers should be able to contact their bank and say, if I try and spend an unusual amount of money to a new person that I’ve never paid money to before, first of all I want that to go onto a slower payments track, and also, here’s my son or daughter’s email address and mobile telephone number. I want you telephone or email them to say that I’m attempting this transaction.”

In this way, the relative can contact their parent and ask them about what they’re doing and, if necessary, let them know it’s a scam. And there’s still time to get back to the bank, tell them it’s a fraud and cancel the transaction.

“It’s having someone else review the transaction decision you’ve taken. When people get sucked into investment frauds, they get told a whole pack of lies by very slick salesmen who convince them they’re going to make an absolute fortune. That’s what the fraudsters do and they do it very well,” says Playle.

“But when someone else looks at that objectively and points out that this is a bad idea, in my opinion, that’s where the potential exists to stop someone from losing money.”

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Academic Research

by Louise Hassan

The Consumer Harm Report:

Changing times in consumer protection Reducing consumer harm online requires not just trading standards, but the corporations and consumers involved in transactions themselves, to do their part The last decade has seen a number of impactful changes to trading standards officers’ roles – not least because of cuts in the number of them. These cuts have occurred at a time when consumers’ use of the internet and social media has been on the rise. Continuing media coverage of high-street retailers that are either no longer viable or in need of restructure highlights that consumers are shifting away from traditional brick-and-mortar stores in favour of online vendors.

This shift in consumption practices poses challenges for trading standards particularly in light of the international nature of companies operating online.

The 2018 Consumer Harm Report from National Trading Standards also highlights a number of emerging threats arising from internet use (for example, social media modelling scams, cryptocurrency investment scams, and online fake ticket vendors).

The internet provides potential anonymity for criminals and poses a threat to consumer protection because if something goes wrong for the consumer, redress is more difficult if not impossible.

These days, reports of fake products, identity theft, scams and misleading

24 |

advertising are prevalent in the media, yet consumers are not as educated on how to stay safe as they could be.

Moreover, the fact that large retailers, such as Amazon, are encountering problems with third-party sellers being found to sell counterfeit products¹, coupled with news stories suggesting that consumers cannot trust product reviews as reviews can be fake2 means that the potential net of victims is colossal.

Unfortunately, with resources stretched, the task of tackling and investigating e-crime can seem insurmountable.

Against this backdrop, how can consumers become better informed and thus protected?

Corporate social marketing Given that large corporations such as Amazon have been found to inadvertently sell counterfeit products, revisiting company policies is important. At the same time, companies should go further and expend resources to highlight and tackle problems such as fake reviews.

Take for example Barclays, which in 2016 started a series of campaigns aimed at highlighting how criminals could target consumers to obtain financial

information3. The objective of these campaigns was to address the ‘digital safety gap’4 as consumers are quick to take up new technology but less knowledgeable about how to do so safely.

Such a campaign can be considered a corporate social marketing campaign5 because the company is addressing a social problem, that of fraud, and using marketing techniques to try to encourage a positive change in consumer behaviour.

Traditionally, governments use social marketing techniques to engender changes in behaviour that would improve, for instance, the health of the nation (such as the ‘Change4Life’ campaign).

Companies too can use this approach to benefit their key stakeholder group, namely their customers.

The benefit to companies in making their customers more aware of the risk are threefold: First, consumers being aware should make them less susceptible to fraudulent transactions that would sour the customer-firm relationship; second, consumers who come across suspicious activity might be more inclined to report it; and third, proactive action protecting their customer base will likely yield reputational benefits for the firm.

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Journal of Trading Standards

offer announcements, insurance updates). Moreover, a state of fear is not only in itself detrimental, but also leads consumers to lose trust in organisations.

Overall, the importance of educating consumers regarding the safe use of the internet for shopping and for financial transactions outweighs the potential negative consequences. With already 44% of those aged 75 and over now online7 there is the potential that in another decade, in the Consumer Harm Report 2028, current problems such as doorstep crime and mass-marketing mail fraud will receive less resource, as they are seen by criminals and consumers as outdated means of communicating and transacting, while internet fraud becomes more prevalent and requires increased resource.

Such corporate social marketing actions can be pluses for trading standards because these actions also address and deliver key objectives for trading standards, but without incurring direct costs. Although corporate social marketing is a promising avenue, it is not in the control of trading standards and despite potential gains there is a need for further study on how consumers respond to this type of marketing approach as they could be sceptical of the underlying forprofit agenda.

Raising awareness, increasing fear Nevertheless, with increased media reports of consumer protection issues there is no doubt that the general level of awareness of potential scams and other fraud will rise. Although this increased awareness can have positive benefits, there are potential downsides, such as heightened fear by consumers.

I’m currently working on a research project looking at fear of online identity threat6 which is a general tendency for consumers to feel fear because of the possibility of the theft of personal and financial data when conducting transactions online.

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Confronted with this fear, consumers have a higher likelihood of engaging in three preventative actions: disruptive (retaliatory behaviours); defensive (force companies to stop collecting information about them); deflective (shielding actions like giving false information).

Thus, with the increasing awareness of fraud some consumers may feel uncomfortable and take the actions indicated to reduce their risk. These actions, although potentially protecting them, could also mean that they don’t receive as good a service from companies (for example, through loyalty schemes,

“These days, reports of fake products, identity theft, scams and misleading advertising are prevalent in the media, yet consumers are not as educated on how to stay safe as they could be.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Professor Louise Hassan (Bangor University) specialises in understanding consumer protection issues. She has extensive experience in modelling and evaluating consumers’ reactions to behavioural change interventions principally in the health domain.

References 1. US Government Accountability Office, ‘Agencies Can Improve Efforts to Address Risks Posed by Changing Counterfeits Market’, February, 2018 | 2. BBC News Business, ‘Online sellers ‘pay for positive reviews’’ October, 2018 | 3. Barclays.co.uk, ‘Financial scams, Learn how to avoid them’, retrieved November, 2018 | 4. Express.co.uk, ‘Barclays Bank launches new £10m advertising campaign to fight fraud’, May, 2017 | 5. Kotler, P, & Lee, N (2005) ‘Best of breed: When it comes to gaining a market edge while supporting a social cause, ‘corporate social marketing’ leads the pack’. Social Marketing Quarterly, 11 (3-4), 91-103. | 6. Hille, P, Walsh, G, & Cleveland, M (2015) ’Consumer fear of online identity theft: Scale development and validation’ Journal of Interactive Marketing, 30, 1-19. | 7. Office for National Statistics, ‘Internet Users, UK:2018’, May 2018.

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Doorstep Crime

by Will Hatchett

KEEPING THE

WOLF FROM THE DOOR

26 |

Winter 2018

Journal of Trading Standards

MORE PEOPLE LIVING ALONE, AN AGEING POPULATION AND EVER-REDUCING PUBLIC SERVICES ARE A FERTILE ENVIRONMENT FOR DOORSTEP CRIME It’s a classic scam, which all TSOs will recognise. A self-declared roofer, with a previous conviction for fraud, is touting for work street by street. He starts by offering to clean soffits and gutters for a nominal eighty-five quid. But this is merely a ruse to gain access to the roof. Surprise, surprise, he immediately discovers missing roof tiles and damaged brickwork. The initial cost escalates dramatically. There is no ‘cooling off period’ for the unlucky customer.

In this true-life case, which happened in St Albans last year, there were seven elderly and vulnerable victims. The ‘roofer’ relieved them, collectively, of between £10,000 and £12,000.

The officer who investigated the case is Tim Day, Senior Trading Standards Officer with Hertfordshire County Council and CTSI’s Lead Officer for Doorstep Crime.

The case involved familiar elements of aggression, intimidation and threats of criminal damage. The crime was flagged up when an elderly man attended a local bank to withdraw £6,000 (he had already paid out £4,000). Alerted by the staff, the police arrested him and charged him with fraudulent trading. He was tried in October, in a prosecution brought by the council. Guidelines suggest a sentence of two to four years.

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This great example of joined-up working is sadly not typical. A worrying report from CTSI’s national tasking group on doorstep crime for 2014/15 revealed that more than 60% of authorities allocate 10% or less of their budget to this issue, despite 62% stating that it is a high priority. Liaison with police services and intelligence sharing is patchy and, in some cases, non-existent.

The best-resourced authorities employ up to 30 trading standards officers (TSOs), split between business and consumer work. They have an in-house solicitor and can access the services of an accredited financial investigator. But this is far from universal. Many authorities, says the report, take an average of only one prosecution per year.

Preying on the isolated The report lists a depressing litany of doorstep crimes. Offering roofing, gardening services, driveway improvement and power washing head the list, with poor quality service, absence of paperwork, aggressive behaviour and overcharging par for the course. 65% of victims are aged 75 and over. More than half live alone. Their house has often been ‘stickered’ – an indication to other doorstep criminals of a vulnerable person.

Phil Mawhinney, policy manager with Age UK, sheds further light on why older people can fall prey to scams.

He says: ‘You have to imagine what it’s like not to see or speak to anyone for weeks on end. A phone call or a letter might be your only source of connection to the outside world. People who are significantly lonely or living with cognitive impairment can be at high risk

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Doorstep Crime

by Will Hatchett

65% OF VICTIMS ARE AGED 75 AND OVER. MORE THAN HALF LIVE ALONE. THEIR HOUSE HAS OFTEN BEEN ‘STICKERED’ – AN INDICATION TO OTHER DOORSTEP CRIMINALS OF A VULNERABLE PERSON.

and scammers prey on these circumstances.’

Age UK publishes helpful information, in print and online, and runs an advice line. In London, a number of its local groups are piloting a new programme to raise awareness and provide support to victims, working with local trading standards teams.

Mawhinney says: ‘We know that trading standards services have suffered extreme cuts and that this has affected their ability to intervene. It’s really important to get the point across to government that there are wider costs to reducing advice and enforcement services. People who lose their life savings could require welfare benefits, and the shock can mean that they end up in hospital or care.’

So-called ‘Suckers’ Lists’ Not prone to discouragement, Louise Baxter, head of the 15-strong National Trading Standards scams team, hosted by Surrey County Council, has been extremely active in this area.

From 2007, as chair of CTSI’s Consumer Empowerment Alliance, she gave a profile to a problem that she knew was occurring on a huge scale. At that time, only 5% of scams were being reported and very few trading standards services were giving priority to the problem.

In 2012, she used a £30,000 government grant to fund an innovative project. A ‘suckers’ list’ (a list of targets for scams) was split into areas and names were emailed to trading standards services. Agreements were signed with participating councils, committing officers to make contact. A further £100,000 grant led to the setting up of the National Trading Standards Scams Team. Working with TSOs, telephone and postal providers,

28 |

voluntary agencies and international police services, the team identifies and supports victims and works to cut off bogus marketing material. Since 2015, about 17 million pieces of suspect mail have been diverted from the postal system.

Baxter says that UK victims lose between £5bn and £10bn a year to mass marketing scams. The postal variety is normally based in English-speaking countries abroad. Scams include fake lotteries, investments and prize draws, bogus clairvoyants and ineffective medicines.

Once on a ‘suckers’ list’, a target will receive an increasing volume of mail, up to 20 or 30 items a day. They may be connived into sending personal financial details. Victims may be too embarrassed to reveal that they have been deceived. She notes: ‘The average age of a marketing scam victim is 75. But it can happen to anybody. Anybody, when they are vulnerable, can make an unwise decision or buy stuff that they would not normally buy.’

‘Suckers’ lists’ are still sent out by her team to trading standards services, on a

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Journal of Trading Standards

“When We began, only 6% of trading standards services regarded scamming as a high priority. noW, it’s 90%. We are helping more people than ever before.” louise baxter, nts scams team monthly basis. Baxter says: ‘This is our core work. Of about 200 services, 176 are signed up. They receive a bespoke service.

We’ll send them five names or 20, or the whole list of up to 5,000 people, so that they can make a visit.’

Friends Against Scams In 2016, the team launched Friends Against Scams. The grass roots organisation recruits those who have a neighbour or relative who may be susceptible to fraud and gives them the resources to help. So far, 129,000 friends have been signed up – the ambitious target is to reach a million by 2020. Scam marshals, who may have been victims themselves, are recruited to send suspect mail to the scams team.

Much has been achieved by the national team, in a climate of reducing resources. For example, a recent banking protocol commits banks and building societies to contact police and trading standards if an older person is making an unusual cash withdrawal, as we saw in Hertfordshire. There have been 5,319 calls and 336 arrests since it went live. An astonishing £37m worth of fraud has been avoided.

Baxter says: ‘When we began, only 6% of trading standards services regarded scamming as a high priority. Now, it’s 90%. We are helping more people than ever before. Having said that, it’s hard, given that council services have been cut back by 50 to 60% since 2014.’

Cornwall’s creative aproaches Nigel Strick, fair trading team manager for Cornwall Council, has used imaginative techniques to retain service delivery in these tough times.

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Covering the entire county, his 11-person team includes TSOs, enforcement officers, a part-time financial investigator and an intelligence analyst.

In June, he organised a presentation on scams to elected members that was live-streamed on the council’s website.

Designed to drive home the vital role of his service, the presentation encouraged them to refer cases and provide support for victims. So far, 20 have signed up.

Referrals, he says, come from the Citizens Advice Consumer Service (over 3,000 last year), the police and the national scams team. At any time, fair trading, helped by regional and specialist police teams, will have around 30 criminal cases on the go. Some fraud gangs are believed to be employing trafficked people and cases regularly go to crown court.

Cornish residents, he reveals, are paying out almost £500,000 a year to rogue tradesmen. Genuine businesses lose out to the tune of more than £200,000. The costs don’t stop there. Home Office studies have shown that a victim of doorstep fraud is more than twice as likely to require residential care as a similar unaffected neighbour within two years.

Strick says: ‘Last year, our adult social care service spent £118m on residential and nursing care. That’s a huge slice of our budget. If trading standards can prevent only a hundred people a year going into care, that represents a very large amount saved.

Hopefully, we are raising awareness among adult social care services, elected members and other parts of the council. The key to this is engaging with other departments, so that we have a more joined-up approach.’

His team has delivered 20 training sessions to a police contact centre and benefits from a seconded police community support officer. Unusually, it is using volunteers to carry out personalised visits to scam victims referred from the national scams team. It regularly provides warnings through BBC local radio.

He says: ‘Remember, some of the people committing these offences are trained from an early age to seem plausible. They can easily identify where vulnerable people are living from visual clues, like is the garden unkempt, are there grab rails by the front door. They have all the tricks and they can switch from being charming to aggressive at the drop of a hat.’

A gloomy outlook In an ideal world, every vulnerable person would benefit from community support. Trading standards would have a higher profile and be better funded. Unfortunately, as we all know, that is not currently the case.

CTSI’s national tasking group on doorstep crime concludes, bleakly: ‘Until there is a more widespread and effective enforcement, we believe that doorstep crime offenders will continue to offend, going largely undetected. They will defraud the elderly and vulnerable, exploiting the advantages available to them by crossing LA and force borders.’Although services are showing resourcefulness and imagination and the national trading standards scams team is at the cutting edge of new ideas, that is a worrying message for us all.

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Offensive Weapons

by Helen Nugent

THE OFFENSIVE WEAPONS BILL:

TAKING BACK

CONTROL 30 |

Journal of Trading Standards

The Government’s new weapons bill – if it ever makes it through into law – will bring in measures that are long overdue in managing violent crime, including the control of corrosive substances, but it’s more enforcement work and more training for an already overburdened profession Parliament isn’t known for its speed. The passage of a Bill through the House of Commons and the Lords can take months, even years, as it makes it way through first readings, second readings, committee stages, report stages and third readings.

It’s a wonder that anything actually becomes law.

But the Offensive Weapons Bill, designed to clamp down on people carrying dangerous weapons such as corrosive substances and knives, has hit an unusual number of obstacles.

With tensions running high over the Government’s plans for Brexit, a scheduled reading of the Bill in midOctober was abandoned at the eleventh hour. Critics said that ministers’ fears of a rebellion over a proposed ban on certain high-powered rifles had prompted the Bill’s withdrawal.

It’s not the first time this has happened.

The plans had already been delayed by a week for similar reasons, not least a suggestion that the Prime Minister wants to keep Brexiteers on side. But experts, including senior trading standards officers, agree that legislation to tackle acid and knife attacks is well overdue.

Brandon Cook, CTSI lead officer for

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

age-restricted sales, says: “It’s high time that there is some control over corrosive substances. Clearly, it’s not just about people under the age of 18 that are a problem, although it’s important that something is done there. If we’ve got other age-restricted products then why wouldn’t we also want to control a substance that could be used as a weapon? Clearly that’s the next step.”

The full measures of the Offensive Weapons Bill are thorough and detailed.

They include the creation of a new criminal offence of selling – both online and offline – a corrosive substance to someone aged under 18. Contained within the Bill is a list of products, both acids and alkalis, that constitute corrosive substances, as well as outlawed concentration levels.

There are also new criminal offences for possessing a corrosive substance in a public place, dispatching bladed and corrosive products sold online to residential addresses - except in specific circumstances - possessing weapons such as knuckledusters and death stars, and there’s an extension of existing offences of possessing a bladed or offensive weapon on school premises.

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Offensive Weapons

by Helen Nugent

The resources issue Trish Burls, TS Manager for Croydon and London lead for knives, explains the implications for trading standards officers. “The proposals are to make certain corrosive substances agerestricted as well as prohibiting their delivery to a residential address, the same proposal as for knives. It will also be an offence for a delivery company to deliver corrosive substances or knives to a person under 18 where an agreement is in place for the delivery of such products and the seller is non-UK-based.

It will bring in a whole new area of agerestricted products, but it’s complicated to say the least. There will undoubtedly be a significant impact on resources for trading standards – training ourselves, educating businesses including delivery companies - an area of business that we won’t necessarily have engaged with up to now in any depth at all, and then carrying out necessary enforcement to ensure understanding and compliance.”

Despite the challenges ahead, Burls says that the Offensive Weapons Bill is absolutely needed. “In relation to corrosives there is currently no defined piece of law which prohibits the sale of such products to young people. Corrosive attacks in London are becoming commonplace; it’s the weapon of choice in some areas. While making the products age-restricted won’t solve the problem, it will go towards making the substances more difficult to get hold of by young people. We’re currently relying on a voluntary agreement by retailers not to sell to under-18s.

“Similarly, knife crime rates are currently at a seven-year high in London.

While it’s clear that some knives are taken from the kitchen drawer, we also know that some are purchased, both from high

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street shops and online. The Bill goes some way towards addressing online sales. This won’t be a panacea to all violent crime but it will hopefully go some way towards contributing to a reduction in attacks.”

Stephen Timms, MP for East Ham, knows more than most about the scale of the problem. According to statistics from the Metropolitan Police, his borough has the largest number of acid attacks, not least a terrible incident last year when two cousins were left with permanent physical and mental damage after acid was thrown through the window of their car.

In the wake of that appalling violent act, Timms called on the Government to do a number of things to address what had been a rapid rise in acid attacks.

“The key thing I wanted the Government to do was to make it an offence to carry acid in the street in exactly the same way

It’s high time that there is some control over corrosive substances.

If we’ve got other age-restricted products then why wouldn’t we also want to control a substance that could be used as a weapon?

that it’s long been an offence to carry a knife in the street. And this Bill does that, so I’m pleased. I would have liked for it to happen a bit quicker but I am very pleased it is happening.”

Taking it further But Timms, who was on the parliamentary committee scrutinising the Offensive Weapons Bill, wants more to be done. “I think the Government should be going further in a number of respects. One of them is directly relevant to trading standards officers. I tabled an amendment in discussion with the Trading Standards Institute in committee calling on the Government to give trading standards officers powers to enforce measures that are in the Bill. Unfortunately, the ministers declined to do that. So I’m going to try again when the Bill comes back to the Commons on report stage.”

Trading standards officers concur that enforcement of the new legislation could be difficult. “We all need more resources,” says Burls. “This is going to be another duty to add to a long list. We’ve asked for enforcement powers to be included as they weren’t originally. Challenges will include training needs, identifying retailers who sell knives and corrosives remember we don’t know who is out there as there is currently no requirement for a

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Journal of Trading Standards

business to register the fact that they sell either product and so we can only target, for education and enforcement, those that we know about. These are summary-only cases and therefore time limits are short for the institution of legal proceedings.

Any repeat offences out of the six-month time limit won’t be included in a case.”

While the specifics of the challenges before trading standards aren’t yet clear, what is certain, as Burls points out, is the need for more resources. It’s well known that local authorities have lost a huge number of tools at their disposal in recent years, including around 50% of their departments in the past decade, and the picture isn’t getting any better. They are continuing to lose staff and budgets.

Cook says: “I guess there will be an expectation for trading Standards at local level to do some enforcement. That’s what the ministers will be looking for. They’ll want trading standards to do something which shows them that something is happening. Our problem at local level will be resources. So as regards priorities, it will be about the local intelligence picture. It’s working with partners such as the police to determine whether individual areas have got an acid problem or a corrosive substance problem. And, if there is an issue, that’s where resources can be poor. The resources only go so

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

While it’s clear that some knives are taken from the kitchen drawer, we also know that some are purchased, both from high street shops and online. The Bill goes some way towards addressing online sales.

far. And this is the same with knives.

It’s about identifying what the picture is in your locality and then dealing with those priorities. I suspect that we’ll see a different picture across the country according to what the problem is.”

The impact for businesses Peter Stonely, CTSI lead officer for civil law, agrees. “There is clearly a need for this legislation after recent events involving the use of corrosive substances in crimes, but it does place another burden upon stretched trading standards resources. This is also quite a comprehensive set of controls over the sale of corrosive substances as it does not just cover underage sales but also deliveries to residential premises, and it also places responsibilities on delivery services. It is inevitable that this will also

lead to requests from SMEs for advice, who won’t have legal departments to help them out, thereby placing further demands on trading standards.”

He adds: “In terms of the basics of an offence and a defence for underage sales I am sure that trading standards will be able to enforce the legislation. There may be greater challenges with regard to some of the other offences with regard to the sale of corrosive substances.”

As for whether the Bill, in its current format, goes far enough, the general consensus is that it doesn’t, including the aforementioned issue of enforcement powers. But there are other concerns.

“The Bill doesn’t address the issue of non-UK-based sellers, obviously,” says Burls. “Instead, any delivery companies who know that they are delivering knives will be culpable. We know that weapons that are currently banned in the UK are available online from abroad and can be ordered at the click of a button.

And we would like to see knives/blades inaccessible to customers, be it in a locked cabinet or behind the counter.”

At present, other than a moral responsibility, there’s nothing to prevent a retailer from selling sulphuric acid to a ten-year-old. Once the legislation is enacted, whenever that is, it’s possible that some retailers may choose to remove certain things from their shelves entirely, as Cook explains.

“One way around it for a number of businesses would be to not sell the products at all. So, if you were going to sell something with a corrosive substance in it which has a worthwhile use - maybe to take limescale off your taps or something - you just sell it in a concentration that doesn’t mean that the law kicks in. Which actually would make it safer for everybody because over-18s wouldn’t be able to buy it from there either.”

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Think Piece

The local government conundrum The government’s call for a ‘strong national body’ through its consumer markets consultation must be matched by a willingness to have that body fully engage with the issues facing trading standards enforcers at a local level

Ben Richards Campaigns and Policy Executive, CTSI

a broader role for a new agency must mean taking a level of responsibility for the whole system of consumer protection

34 |

In so many ongoing debates - many of which have been featured in this journal - resourcing, and resilience of local authority trading standards services within the consumer protection system as a whole has been repeatedly questioned.

The NAO summarised this in its 2016 report Protecting Consumers from Scams, Unfair Trading and Unsafe Goods where it identified the growing concern around gaps in consumer protection at a local level concluding that “the system as a whole is not yet demonstrating that it provides value for money”.

On 11 April, 2018 the government published Modernising Consumer Markets, a consultation setting out the future challenges to protect the public and proposing changes to meet them. In particular it contained a proposal for a strengthened national consumer body.

In whatever form this central body takes the government must be clear that without considering the importance of local authority services and their resourcing - any future changes, (whenever they come after the ongoing parliamentary focus on Brexit) will not create a consumer protection system that is fit for the 21st century.

The role of a central body The chapter marked ‘Improving enforcement of consumer rights’outlines

the need for “a strong national body with statutory powers and duties that could provide leadership and specific expertise and lead complex national enforcement cases where necessary”.

While more specifics on this will only come in a government response or a Consumer White Paper, CTSI feels that this move would be a useful step by providing a focal point if there were transparent mechanisms for local services to involve the central body.

At a minimum, Government could assign powers to National Trading Standards/Trading Standards Scotland so that they may initiate prosecutions in their own right (or share the legal risk with a local authority). The ability to take action alone against criminality that corresponds with their objectives makes sense – as does allowing them to share responsibility and costs with local authorities in larger cases.

What would be key is that there is a clear definition of when national powers are used - especially for consumers who may expect a national body to override local decisions.

Need to focus on resources However, while a national agency in some form may have merits, CTSI’s main concern is that in the green paper there are no concrete proposals to address

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Journal of Trading Standards

Structure of the consumer protection regime HM Treasury

Competition and Markets Authority

Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs

Department for Communities and Local Government

Food Standards Agency

Trading Standards Scotland

National funding This funds activities such as: ▪ Citizens Advice consumer service ▪ National Trading Standards specialist team activities ▪ Competition and Markets Authority enforcement activities ▪ Chartered Trading Standards Institute’s provision of business advice

Regional funding This funds activities such as: ▪ Regional intelligence analysis ▪ Regional investigations and enforcements (using LA powers)

Local funding This funds activities such as: ▪ Local investigations and enforcements ▪ Local Trading Standard’s provision of business advice

Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy

Chartered Trading Standards Institute

Welsh Government

Citizens Advice

National Trading Standards

Citizens Advice Scotland

Scottish Government

Food Standards Scotland

Office for Product Safety & Standards

National Trading Standards

Local Trading Standards England

Local Trading Standards Wales

Local Trading Standards Scotland

Source: National Audit Office analysis of consumer protection bodies’ data

the haemorrhaging of staff, experience, and skills from the consumer protection system - primarily at a local level.

It is here where we consider a broader role for a new agency must mean taking a level of responsibility for the whole system of consumer protection – including the decisions on resourcing taken at a local authority level.

In the first instance this could mean a nationally led measurement system of enforcement, capacity, and business support, to give policy makers a clearer picture of what trading standards can do

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

especially when they are considering any new duties.

However, the institute would take this a step further - with the national agency taking a role in understanding the gaps in capacity forming because of local decisions, offering guidance to local government with a decisive steer on what local enforcers contribute to nationally.

This could go as far as defining what trading standards does locally in relation to national priorities.

Further, a national body could offer expertise to support services if

they are considering combining with other authorities, helping to place them on sustainable footing with local accountability structures that work.

The success or failure of a future consumer White Paper relies on Government’s willingness to answer the local government conundrum. Another reform which focuses only on the national but sidesteps the falling resources at a local level which are depleting the foundations of the system would be a missed opportunity in which, ultimately, consumers and businesses will suffer.

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Operation Rogue Trader

36 |

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Journal of Trading Standards

OpeRaTiOn

Rogue TRadeR

Operation Rogue Trader is an annual campaign to raise awareness and crack down on doorstep crime, scams and other offences. This year’s operation took place between 8 and 12 October 2018, with the main day of action on 10 October. We take a look at the numbers behind its success A national day of joint enforcement action in October of this year, known as ‘Operation Rogue Trader’, saw trading standards work alongside police and other enforcement partners to target rogue traders and aggressive doorstep sellers across the UK, identifying more than 700 individual offences.

Activities during the operation included executing warrants, identifying vehicles used by criminals through automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), conducting intelligence-led patrols and raids, and educating members of the public and frequently-targeted groups before they can be scammed.

Online and social media engagement also played an important role as did community-based awareness events, which saw trading standards and police engage with the groups most frequently targeted by rogue traders, visiting households and offering advice on avoiding falling victim to rogue traders.

Operation Rogue Trader is a national multi-agency campaign coordinated by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute alongside Liberal, the Police National Intelligence Unit.

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

Liberal spokesperson, Andy Luckett, said: “Operation Rogue Trader catches offenders and disrupts criminal activity. Rogue traders tend to be involved in a number of illegal activities and working with multiple agencies means we can seriously obstruct criminals and get them off the streets.”

In contrast to previous years, the focus of this year’s operation shifted from enforcement to crime-prevention, with more than double the number of community events taking place.

Discussing the shift in focus, Louise Baxter, CTSI Lead Officer for Consumer Education and Team Manager at National Trading Standards, said: “It’s crucial to raise awareness of doorstep crime and help prevent innocent people from falling victim to these criminals. This campaign provides a platform to educate people and put a stop to doorstep crime in our communities.”

Approximately one third fewer personnel took part in the Operation this year as agencies and public services across the country continue to experience the results of budget cuts.

CTSI Lead Officer for Doorstep Crime, Tim Day, said: “Despite the decrease in the personnel involved, the number of offences identified was not proportionally lower. It’s also telling that, despite the high number of offences, there were far fewer arrests than last year.

“Rogue traders and doorstep fraudsters prey on the most vulnerable in society. Working closely with the police and other agencies means we can intervene sooner and safeguard potential victims, but services are struggling under cuts and there is a genuine concern as to how long enforcers can continue to protect the public under this strain.”

It’s crucial to raise awareness of doorstep crime and help prevent innocent people from falling victim to these criminals.

This campaign provides a platform to educate people and put a stop to doorstep crime in our communities Louise Baxter CTSI Lead Officer for Consumer education and Team Manager at national Trading Standards

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Operation Rogue Trader

Regional Breakdown OVERALL Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

708 19 989 1,381

Scotland Figures not available

Northern Ireland Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

North East 96 2 97 16

Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

89 0 207 0

Yorkshire and the Humber Figures not available

Midlands Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

East of England

North West Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

24 0 71 44

18 0 117 146

Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

3 0 42 5

Wales Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

107 8 78 293

South West Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

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216 7 299 617

London Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

8 0 15 42

South East Offences identified Arrests Vehicles stopped/checked Households Visited

88 2 97 170

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Journal of Trading Standards

The Numbers

1,156

£5,198 708/19 money saved by consumers

offences/arrests

989

9,461

941

530

379

621

personnel involved

vehicles stopped and checked

media items generated

leaflets delivered

businesses stopped and checked

pieces of property seized

community safety outreach events

Personnel involved POLICE

TRADING STANDARDS

HMRC

767 251 19 ENVIRONMENT AGENCY

UK VISAS AND IMMIGRATION

24 2 www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

LOCAL AUTHORITY

DVSA (VOSA)

DWP

27 9 COMMUNITY WARDENS

28 6

OTHER

DVLA

1 TOTAL

22 1,156 | 39

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In conversation with: Kelly Tolhurst

Journal of Trading Standards

I n c o n v e r s at I o n w I t h

Kelly TolhursT Kelly Tolhurst is the second consumer minister of 2018; a year where real momentum has been seen in the Government’s drive to provide national capacity to support trading standards. We asked her about her priorities and plans to continue this propitious work

BY HELEN NUGENT

In a year of dramatic reshuffles at the highest level of government, few roles have been left untouched. At the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, there have been two new Small Business Ministers in the past 12 months alone.

Appointed on July 19, 2018 following the resignation of Andrew Griffiths, Kelly Tolhurst has a lot on her plate.

From overseeing one-man bands to corporate governance rules for FTSE 100 companies, the MP for Rochester and Strood has responsibility for a wide range of issues. In November she took the reins for overseeing the enforcement of the pubs code and pubs code adjudicator, taking over from Richard Harrington.

With a ministerial portfolio fit to burst, the former Assistant Government Whip recently announced new measures to support businesses, including a commitment to end the unfair treatment meted out to small businesses by late payments for products and services. As most small businesses will attest, this has been an ongoing problem for some considerable time.

“We are absolutely committed to creating a fair and just business environment and ensuring Britain is one of the best places in Europe to start and run a small business,” says Tolhurst.

“There are 5.7 million small businesses

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in the UK, with 1,000 starting up every day. Nearly a quarter of all UK businesses say that late payments are a threat to their survival, so tackling this issue represents a huge opportunity for economic growth.

In fact, research from the Federation of Small Businesses suggests sorting out late payments could add £2.5 billion to the UK economy and keep an extra 50,000 businesses open each year.

“Over the past five years the amount owed to businesses in late payments has halved, but we will go further to make sure all of our small businesses are treated fairly. We want to encourage as many people as possible to respond to the consultation.”

She is referring to the open consultation on ‘Creating a responsible payment culture: a call for evidence on tackling late payment’. What comes of this remains to be seen but it is to be hoped that it’s a step in the right direction. Meanwhile, there are problems such as cybercrime, pensions fraud and fake lotteries to deal with.

Communities against scams Tolhurst says: “We recognise the rising problem of scams, and ensuring markets work fairly and effectively for consumers is central to our modern Industrial Strategy and I’m proud to say the UK’s consumer protection regime is among

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In conversation with: Kelly Tolhurst

the strongest in the world. National Trading Standards do vital work in protecting consumers from scammers, dangerous goods and shoddy services.

Recently I was pleased to meet some of the National Trading Standards Scams Team and people they had helped. I would like to congratulate the team for the success of their Friends Against Scams initiative and re-confirm my support for the initiative which aims to protect and prevent people from becoming victims by empowering communities to take a stand against scams.”

As for the Government’s Industrial Strategy, what measures within this are important to her as Small Business Minister? “The aim of our modern Industrial Strategy is to boost the UK’s productivity by backing businesses to create good jobs and increase the earning power of people throughout the UK with investment in skills, industries and infrastructure. We are doing this in a variety of ways including strengthening the foundations of productivity - the fundamentals that support a skilled, innovative, geographically balanced economy. Simultaneously we are building long-term strategic partnerships with businesses through sector deals between government and industry and taking on the grand challenges that face our economy and society.”

The daughter of a boat-builder, Rochester-born Tolhurst ran a marine survey business with her father before being elected to parliament in the May 2015 General Election. Prior to that, she was a local councillor. During her time in Westminster, she has served on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, the European Scrutiny

42 |

As a responsible government we are preparing for all potential outcomes [of Brexit], including the unlikely scenario in which no mutually satisfactory agreement can be reached.

Right Kelly Tolhurst meets with the National Trading Scams team to sign up to the Friends Against Scams initiative.

Committee, and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee.

Tolhurst voted to remain in the European Union, so how does she think Brexit will affect trading standards and the work that officers do? “We are focused on ensuring UK regulators continue to have access to the information they need to identify and take action on unsafe products. While data exchange across the EU about unsafe products is still subject to negotiations, we are developing our own product safety database to exchange data between UK enforcement

authorities. The Government wants a positive future relationship with the EU that encompasses both economic and security cooperation. As a responsible government we are preparing for all potential outcomes, including the unlikely scenario in which no mutually satisfactory agreement can be reached.”

Prioritising public safety In the meantime, there are pressing matters at hand, not least the challenges facing trading standards. According to the CTSI Workforce Survey 2017, there

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“Recently I was pleased to meet some of the National Trading Standards Scams Team and people they had helped. I would like to congratulate the team for the success of their Friends Against Scams initiative”

has been a fall of at least 50% in trading standards officers in the past seven years.

Many are concerned that these cuts put the public at risk.

Tolhurst says: “The Government recognises the challenges faced by trading standards officers and our first responsibility is to ensure the safety of the British public. We recognise the expertise and professionalism of trading standards officers around the country who do valuable work with businesses to ensure products are safe and appropriate action is taken if not.

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

“Through the Office for Product Safety and Standards, which was launched in January 2018, we are enhancing the role of local authority trading standards through greater co-ordination and leadership, ensuring the public receives greater protection than ever before.”

Looking ahead, trading standards officers have their work cut out, particularly when squeezed budgets are taken into account. When it comes to enforcement, it can vary from region to region.

“Although we work closely together, trading standards officers work to local priorities which are determined by local needs. Ultimately, these are set by local authorities. Through the Office for Product Safety and Standards we are providing national capacity to ensure they are adequately supported with access to scientific and technical expertise and that national product safety incidents are led by a national body.”

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Military Medals

By Andrew Passenger, Carmarthenshire County Council and Sandra Armstrong, Defence Intellectual Property Rights

Hunting Walter Mitty

The manufacture and supply of counterfeit military medals – and the fact they are often worn by people fraudulently claiming to have served in the armed forces – is not just a matter of intellectual property infringement, it’s an offence against basic decency. We look at how legislation is being implemented to preserve the integrity of military badges We’ve all met them. Those conflated characters whose heroic exploits defy the possible, the ex-special forces soldier who ‘doesn’t like to talk about it’ but will happily tell us how they wrestled a grizzly bear, led an elite band of soldiers into hostile territory, piloted a Sea Harrier and commanded a Type 42 Destroyer all before their 18th birthday.

Such exaggerated antics leave us in awe, not for their death-defying heroism or their magnificent sense of patriotism, but at the apparent lengths some people are prepared to go to validate themselves with false histories in the face of the real

44 |

heroism and often tragic hardships that befall members of our military.

In the armed forces such individuals are known as ‘Walts’ after the protagonist of James Thurber’s 1939 short story ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ which begins with Walter fearlessly leading a naval aircraft crew through a takeoff amid hurricane conditions, only to wake from this daydream to find himself driving his wife into town on their weekly errands.

For the most part, such fantastic fables are taken with a pinch of salt and such fantasists viewed with a sense of sadness, as harmless dreamers, compensating

for low self-esteem or perhaps more disconcertingly, vulnerable people exhibiting symptoms of underlying mental health issues.

It is therefore disturbing to recognise that a whole industry exists to serve and fuel such distorted realities, one of the most distasteful aspects of which is the manufacture and sale of counterfeit military honours.

Badges of dishonour Carmarthenshire County Councillor Rob Evans brought this matter to the attention of local Trading Standards officers after

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Journal of Trading Standards

About the veterans’ badge The HM Armed Forces veterans’ badge was launched in May 2004 by the then Minister for Veterans, Ivor Caplin, to enable the wider public to identify veterans. The first lapel badge was issued on 10 May 2004 to Lord Healey, a veteran of the Battle of Monte Cassino.

This initiated the roll-out of the badge to the generation who served in the second world war. Since then eligibility to apply for the badge has been extended in sequential phases and now all veterans are eligible to apply.

Design The badge is an enamelled, engraved and pinned lapel badge featuring the words “HM Armed Forces – Veteran”, which encompasses the Tri-Service, Anchor, Crossed Swords and Eagle motif. Its symbolism is intended to unite all veterans and represent the combined efforts of the Tri-Services whilst encouraging a sense of unity and community among veterans.

Eligibility All those who have served in HM Armed Forces, including volunteer and regular reserves, are eligible to apply for the badge. This does not include overseas forces or those who served alongside HM Forces. The veterans’ badge is issued automatically to personnel who exit the services as part of their service leavers pack.

The badge is a survivor’s badge and therefore is not issued posthumously.

The only exception is for War Widows and Widowers who are in receipt of a War Widows/Widowers Pension paid by the MOD. This also includes those who have received an award of Survivors Guaranteed Income Payment (SGIP) under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme. This is in recognition of

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the fact that their spouse or long-term partner’s death was due to their military service.

Intellectual property rights The UK Armed Forces Veterans’ Badge is a European Union Registered Design Number 000274493-0001. This intellectual property right gives the MOD the monopoly to use this design or any variation of this design. It also gives the MOD the right to stop all others from using this design and any variation of this badge. This strict control is vital to protect the integrity of the badge and to protect it against misuse. Original badges to this design are issued by the MOD’s Medal Office. No third party has been licensed to produce copies, replicas or variations of the badge: any such copies are necessarily counterfeit, or otherwise infringe the intellectual property rights in the design. However, re-sale of genuine veterans’ badges are perfectly lawful.

Article 19 of the European Union’s Design Regulation 6/2002 states: “A registered Community design shall confer on its holder the exclusive right to use it and to prevent any third party not having his consent from using it. The aforementioned use shall cover, in particular, the making, offering, putting on the market, importing, exporting or using of a product in which the design is incorporated or to which it is applied, or stocking such a product for those purposes.”

Infringement of this exclusive right constitutes a civil wrong, for which the MOD can go to court to seek damages, seize profits, or seek an injunction. They can also seek to recover legal costs.

Additionally, the Intellectual Property Act 2014 added the following provision into the Registered Designs Act 1949

“35ZA Offence of unauthorized copying etc. of design in course of business”.

35ZA of the Registered Designs Act 1949 makes the knowing manufacture or sale of unauthorised reproductions of registered designs a criminal offence, if done commercially.

It is lawful to sell genuine secondhand badges; these are easily identified by the registered design number embossed on the back of the badge and are usually sold singly. Larger quantities of badges being sold that do not have the registered design number embossed on the back is the indication that they are counterfeit.

Enforcement The Defence Intellectual Property Rights team (DIPR) actively monitors internet marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon and Alibaba for counterfeit veterans’ badges and military medals on a regular basis. Additionally, any complaints received from the public are followed up as a priority and the relevant action is taken.

Local authority trading standards teams can help protect the integrity of the badge by liaising directly with the DIPR and taking local enforcement action where complaints are received or where officers see the badges for sale.

If you see veterans’ badges or military medals for sale you believe may be counterfeit, or require further information on the process of civil and criminal enforcement regarding this or any other MOD intellectual property issue, please contact DIPREnforcement@mod.gov.uk The MOD’s Medal Office, part of Defence Business Services, supplies and issues the veterans’ badge to those eligible. To apply for a veterans’ badge, search ‘Armed forces veterans badge application form’ online.

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Military Medals

By Andrew Passenger, Carmarthenshire County Council and Sandra Armstrong, Defence Intellectual Property Rights

Trading standards officers will be aware of their own powerful armoury of criminal legislation to combat issues surrounding a suspect’s intent in lying about military service and the trade in counterfeit military honours and associated paraphernalia.

Left: Carmarthenshire resident Gareth Blyth was prosecuted after being caught fraudulently collecting for charity in a replica military uniform.

spotting HM Armed Forces veterans’ badges offered for sale for £3 on a local market stall.

Cllr Evans, a Royal Air Force veteran and proud recipient of the veterans’ badge, was saddened to find that such hard-earned honours, awarded for services to Queen and country, had been reduced to cheap trinkets, freely available regardless of military service.

“The badge is a badge of honour and proudly worn by ex-service personnel on the left side over the heart,” he says.

“People who falsely wear the veterans’ badge dishonour our armed service veterans and should feel ashamed.”

Local officers acted quickly, seizing the offending items suspecting they were counterfeit. Subsequent liaison with the MOD Intellectual Property Rights Office

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confirmed this to be the case and the trader was dealt with accordingly.

To demean military service in this way will leave many aghast at the value counterfeiters and suppliers place on the service of our veterans and leads us to question to what ends such items are purchased and used.

Last year Carmarthenshire County Council Licensing Officers successfully prosecuted local man Gareth Blyth after he was caught posing in a replica military uniform ostensibly collecting for a regiment disbanded shortly after the First World War. Replete with a bar of medals and a Shetland Pony by his side, the defendant could be found across the county with a bucketful of cash attracting crowds of young parents, children and the elderly.

Blyth was subsequently found guilty under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (2008), sentenced to a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £5,000 costs.

Fighting back It’s not only IP rights holders and law enforcement who are taking an active interest in such individuals. A secretive online vigilante group comprising a network of serving and ex-services personnel make it their mission to pursue and expose such charlatans.

Calling on the resources and experience of the network, they aggressively pursue suspected impostors with the same organisational precision of our elite special forces units.

The Telegraph has reported on two notable scalps exposed by the network: Anthony Church, a formerly respected Oxfordshire town crier, who had 30 letters adorning his name prior to being exposed by the group; and Roger Day, who shamelessly paraded alongside 600 veterans wearing an SAS beret and 21 military medals and badges which experts confirmed he could not conceivably have won.

There have been calls to criminalise such imposters and the Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill 2017-19, currently making its way through the House of Lords, intends to make it a specific criminal offence to lie about military service by fraudulently wearing medals and awards.

In addition to the proposed legislation, trading standards officers will be aware of their own powerful armoury of criminal legislation to combat issues surrounding a suspect’s intent in lying about military service and the trade in counterfeit military honours and associated paraphernalia.

So turning to the famous SAS motto, ‘who dares wins…’ – who dares manufacture or supply counterfeit medals or wears medals to which they have no legitimate claim may in fact find themselves on the sharp end of criminal and civil law.

Winter 2018

Local Authorities to benefit from practical online legislation guidance By offering legislative training to your retail business partners, you can now generate additional income.

Working in partnership with Virtual College under the joint ‘TradeSimple’ brand, CTSI has developed a suite of practical online courses which offer traders jargon free, step-by-step guidance to important legislation.

Courses currently available

As a local authority reseller, you will have the benefit of your own branded e-commerce site which can be used to promote the above courses.

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• • • • • •

Prevention of Underage Sales Consumer Contracts – Distance Sales Consumer Rights Act 2015 Trading Fairly Storing and Selling Fireworks Safely and Legally Consumer Contracts – Off Premises Sales

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Alternative Dispute Resolution

For further details please visit www.tradesimple.org.uk or email productinfo@tsi.org.uk

CPPD Module

Words by

Andy Allen, Director of Operations, CTSI Andy has led CTsI’s European Consumer Centre since 2013 diversifying the teams remit to include Adr and odr function at both European and National level.

Continuing Personal Professional Development Module

Continuing Personal Professional Development (CPPD) – the systematic improvement of your vocational knowledge and skills, both through expansion and refinement – is absolutely essential in keeping on top of an ever-changing regulatory landscape at this time of restricted resources.

Members of CTSI, and related bodies, are required to maintain their professional competence throughout their careers. As part of its role leading the trading standards profession the CTSI offers free CPPD modules through its publications. The Journal of Trading Standards is pleased to offer the latest in the series here.

After reading the article, you can head to the CTSI website to complete the questions (also included on the last page of the module). More details are included at the end of the article.

Successful completion is worth one hour of CPPD.

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CPPD Module 15:

ADR

ADR is generally a quicker, cheaper, lower risk and more amiable approach to resolving disputes than court proceedings. Whether it’s through mediation, conciliation or arbitration both parties can benefit from it. We review The Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Competent Authorities and Information) Regulations 2015.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), very much as we see it today, has been part of the consumer protection environment for many years. Consumers are commonly aware of schemes such as the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) or the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

Trading standards professionals have made good use of various trade association bodies such as The Glass and Glazing Federation, or membership schemes such as The Furniture Ombudsman. In dealing with consumer complaints trading standards advisors and now Citizens Advice staff have recognised the unwillingness many consumers have to use the court systems to enforce their rights.

These bodies have successfully offered an ‘alternative’ to thousands of consumers. The alternative here was generally meant to be cheaper, quicker and perhaps more importantly to the consumer, perceived as less formal than using the courts. At the same time such schemes offer the trader the chance of time saving and perhaps a better chance of maintaining a good relationship with the customer, and the process is usually confidential.

ADR mechanisms Historically, ADR mechanisms have been varied. Common forms have been mediation, where an independent third party helps the disputing parties to

come to a mutually acceptable outcome; conciliation, where a third party makes a decision, which can be binding on the trader; and arbitration, where an independent third party considers the facts and takes a decision that’s often binding on one or both parties.

ADR is becoming common across many areas of law. Some courts will now insist on the parties using ADR processes before litigation. In all areas of consumer law there is an expectation that the parties try everything reasonable to resolve their dispute before going to court.

Consumers are generally well advised to try ADR even where the trader’s use of such mechanisms is voluntary. An agreement to actually use ADR may lead to a positive result for the consumer and, even where it doesn’t, the consumer usually retains the right to take the dispute to court.

Even where the trader refuses to use ADR, the consumer being able to show this was asked for and refused may well strengthen, or at the least avoid weakening, their case.

The ADR Regulations On 9 July, 2015 The Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Competent Authorities and Information) Regulations 2015 (The ADR Regulations) came into force, giving effect to an EU directive that sought to improve ADR coverage across Europe, recognising

Winter 2018

Journal of Trading Standards

at an EU Commission level, that much had been done to give citizens strong consumer rights, but that mechanisms for enforcing these rights needed to be stronger.

The ADR Regulations broadly delivered three interacting mechanisms. First, a list of criteria that ADR bodies must comply with if they are to become ‘Approved’ ADR bodies for the purposes of the legislation.

Second, the creation of Competent Authorities – bodies who audit for approval against criteria and monitor the continued compliance of approved ADR bodies. And third, ‘Trader Requirements’ for all consumer contracts, where the consumer and trader enter into a dispute, which they fail to resolve themselves. The trader must indicate to the consumer, a body approved by one of the competent authorities to deal with such a dispute and a further indication as to whether the trader is willing, or not, to use the indicated scheme.

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

“In dealing with consumer complaints trading standards advisors and now Citizens Advice staff have recognised the unwillingness many consumers have to use the court systems to enforce their rights.”

Online Dispute Regulations A subsequent piece of legislation, The Online Dispute Regulations, came into force in 2016 introducing, amongst other things, The Online Dispute Resolution Platform (ODR platform) this platform holds the list of all approved ADR bodies in the UK and across the EU. Currently, the competent Authorities, approving ADR bodies in their relevant regulated sectors, are the Financial Conduct Authority, the Legal Services Board, the Civil Aviation Authority, the Gambling Commission, the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority, the Office of Communications and the Lead Enforcement Authority for the purposes of the Estate Agents Act 1979 (1).

CTSI operates as the competent authority across all non-regulated consumer sectors. This has seen the institute approve bodies across diverse sectors including waterways and byways, football, general retail, parking

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CPPD Module

CPPD MODULE 15: ADR

Review the 8 questions below, and when you’re ready, submit your answers at tradingstandards.uk/cppdtest 1. When were the ADR regulations brought into force?

2. Name 3 types of ADR 3. Name 4 of the 8 Competent Authorities 4. What schedule does CTSI check approval against?

5. What additional information must a trader supply if they are obligated to use ADR? 6. In what no. reg is the ‘Trader Requirements’ 7. Name 3 of the requirements that applicants must meet to be approved 8. What subsequent legislation was introduced after ADR and when?

Applicants who complete the module successfully will be given a certificate.

The test must be taken by March 31st 2019.

If you have any questions, please email training@tsi.org.uk Previous module answers are available to members on the Journal of Trading Standards website

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Winter 2018

Journal of Trading Standards

“Such schemes offer the trader the chance of time saving and perhaps a better chance of maintaining a good relationship with the customer, and the process is usually confidential.”

Regulation 19: ConsumeR infoRmation by tRadeRs 19(1) Where a trader is obliged to use alternative dispute resolution services provided by an ADR entity under (a) an enactment; or (b) the rules of a trade association to which the trader belongs, the trader must provide the name and website address of the ADR entity ▪ On the trader’s website, if the trader has a website; and ▪ In the general terms and conditions of sales or service contracts between the trader and a consumer.

19(2) Where a trader has exhausted its internal complaint handling procedure when considering a complaint from a consumer relating to a sales contract or a service contract, the trader must inform

and ticket sales. The CTSI role is to carry out approval audits of applicant bodies, and ongoing monitoring of previously approved bodies, against the requirements as laid down in schedule 3 of the ADR regulations.

An on-site initial audit is conducted and a thorough inspection of the applicant’s website prior to approval.

Then annual compliance visits are carried out to check continuing compliance and to view cases. Requirements that applicant bodies must meet, as laid down by schedule 3 include: Access to the ADR entity; Expertise, Independence and Impartiality; Conflict of interest Procedure; Fairness; Legality and Grounds to refuse to deal with a dispute.

The regulations define a trader as, ‘a person acting for purposes relating to that person’s trade, business, craft or profession, whether acting personally or through another person acting in the trader’s name or on the trader’s behalf’.

Trader requirements Although some traders do not have to agree to use ADR for a consumer dispute (unless it is compulsory for them by law, by scheme membership or by contract)

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

they are required by law to provide certain information about ADR to consumers.

Where a trader is considering a consumer complaint, then at the point where the trader’s internal complainthandling procedure is exhausted they must provide the consumer with the following information: a statement that the trader cannot settle the complaint with the consumer; the name and website address of an ADR provider that could deal with the complaint, if the consumer wishes to use ADR; and whether the trader is obliged or prepared to submit to an ADR procedure operated by that provider (in other words, the trader has to give the consumer details of an ADR provider but does not have to agree to use ADR.) The information must be provided in a ‘durable medium’ - for example, a letter or an email - and it will normally form part of the final ‘deadlock’ letter in response to a consumer complaint.

In addition, where a trader is subject to compulsory ADR, either by law or through the membership of a trade association, they must provide the name and website address of the ADR provider or scheme on their own website (if they have one) and as part of their general contract terms.

the consumer, on a durable medium: ▪ That the trader cannot settle the complaint with the consumer; ▪ Of the name and website address of an ADR entity which would be competent to deal with the complaint, should the consumer wish to use alternative dispute resolution; and ▪ Whether the trader is obliged, or prepared, to submit to an alternative dispute resolution procedure operated by that ADR entity.

The trader information requirements set out in paragraphs (1) and (2) apply in addition to any information requirements applicable to traders regarding out-of-court redress procedures contained in any other enactment.

The trader provision has been criticised for being weak as it is only a voluntary mechanism in most cases.

When the originating directive was first drafted and again at the implementation into UK regulation it was clearly felt that making ADR a requirement in all consumer disputes and, as the regulations do, placing most of the cost for this upon the trader was too big a burden to place upon business at that time. However, the UK Government has treated the regulations as a first step and seems to fully support the development of approved ADR in consumer sectors and others.

It is likely that the trader requirement, and many of the other mechanisms of the current regulations, will be further evolved in the near future.

CONTACT DETAILS For more information on ADR, please contact CTSI on: adrenquiries@tsi.org.uk or visit: www.tradingstandards.uk/ consumers/support-advice For queries relating to Online Dispute Resolution, please visit: https://www.odrcontactpoint.uk/

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Legal

by Mike Andrews, lead co-ordinator for the National Trading Standards eCrime Team

Journal of Trading Standards

The imitation game: Uncovering the copycats Operation Dougal, one of the UK’s biggest online crime investigations, ended in March of this year when Peter Hall was convicted by unanimous jury decisions in two separate trials. These were landmark cases for trading standards, testing National Trading Standard’s legitimacy to prosecute copycat operators, and highlighting problems officers face when dealing with online traders.

This article will provide a brief summary of Operation Dougal before highlighting one or two of the legal issues in this long and difficult, but ultimately historic prosecution.

believing that the copycat websites were official websites and that the consumers were applying and paying for the official services or documents they actually required.

The scam In early 2018, Peter Hall and his accomplices were handed total sentences of 35 years for offences of conspiracy to defraud consumers using a scam first used in early 2011.

To operate the scam Hall used a business called Tad or Vad Services (Tad) and later Tad Services (TSL) to set up a series of so called ‘copycat’ websites.

Copycat websites mimicked or resembled government websites used by consumers to apply online for official documents such as passports, visas, driving licences, tax discs etc. The copycat websites purported to offer services ancillary to applications for official documents; most commonly some variant of ‘check and send or submit’ and other services such as track and trace.

In reality, the services offered were either non-existent or of no value - or such little value that consumers would not have willingly used or paid for them. For example: the so called ‘check and send’ service involved no more than pasting details entered on the copycat website into the corresponding official website.

The aim of the scam was to trick consumers into using and paying for the non-existent or worthless commercial services by misleading them into

How did the scam work?

The key features of the scam were: First, the use of search engine keyword advertising such as Google AdWords. The offenders paid to place adverts at the top of results when consumers searched for terms such as ‘apply for passport’. The ‘ads’ were misleading in that they did not advertise commercial services but invited the consumer to apply for their required official service. These misleading ‘ads’ were the crucial first step in creating the false impression that the consumer was entering an official rather than a commercial website.

Second, the design of the copycat websites used titles, layout, colour, typefaces, text and logos that were copied from - or similar to - those used on official websites to create and maintain the false impression that the copycats were the official websites.

Third, instead of displaying the name TAD or TSL the websites had disclaimers saying they were not the official websites.

However, disclaimers would be in small print, buried in blocks of text, hidden away in side bars or footers or below calls to action where they would be unlikely to be seen or read. Alternatively, prominent and multiple calls to action were used to draw the attention of consumers away

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from ‘compliance’ features.

Fourth, analytical software was used to carefully assess the impact of the inclusion and positioning of compliance features so adjustments could be made to enhance the misleading effect on consumers.

Fifth, for obvious reasons, the copycat websites did not comply with their obligations under the distance selling laws to give consumers written confirmation of the identity of the trader; the product purchased; the price and the consumer’s right to cancel without penalty (see now Regulation 16 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013).

The success of the scam Hall and his accomplices succeeded in scamming thousands of consumers who were tricked into using and paying for non-existent or worthless commercial services. Between 2011-2015 the scam generated takings in excess of £43m.

The most successful copycat website relating to tax discs (see images on p54) generated over £7m between January and July 2014. Hall also successfully tricked trading standards officers and other regulators into thinking that the copycat websites were offering legitimate and genuine added-value, ancillary services, when that was not the case.

Difficulties faced by local TSOs Local TSOs found it difficult to assess

Winter 2018

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

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Legal

by Mike Andrews, lead co-ordinator for the National Trading Standards eCrime Team

the legitimacy of the copycat websites and the value of the services offered, possibly due to the policy of seeking to encourage compliant trading and viewing prosecution as a last resort.

That policy can work well with a legitimate business, but not when faced with a determined fraudster. Asking the following questions may assist in assessing the legitimacy and value of similar websites in the future: First, given the internet’s ease and convenience, would consumers use a copycat, or similar site, rather than going directly to the official site?

Second, would consumers pay premium prices for something they can do themselves or get for free? For example, would someone pay Tad £40 for help to renew their tax disk, when they could just tick boxes? Or would they pay someone £72.50 to cut and paste their details into the official site?

Misleading features of copycat sites The following features of copycat sites could appear on almost any scam site, and may prove useful in spotting problem sites in the future: 01. Use of online advertising delivering victims to copycat sites reinforced the illusion consumers were using official sites.

02. Use of domain names resembling the official site domains e.g: www.directgov.uk.net.

03. Using branding, design and layouts copied from other sites. Copycats’ copied official site layouts, logos, colours, fonts and headlines, showing what users expected to see on an official site.

04. Using direct copies of official application forms.

05. Using disclaimers and titles that fail to identify traders.

06. Making disclaimers harder to see, or putting them next to prominent, colourful call-to-action buttons that draw user’s attention away from the disclaimers. Hall’s use of disclaimers is covered later in the article.

07. Including fake comparison tables to satisfy search engine requirements

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Top image: The official government site as it appeared in 2014 Bottom image: Tad’s copycat tax disc site

and improve search results.

Tad’s comparison tables did not even compare like with like. The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) suggested that the tables confused and misled consumers.

08. Use of terms and conditions to circumvent legal rights under the Distance Selling Regulations 2000 (DSR) and, after 13 June 2014, the Consumer Contract (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 (CCICAC). The regulations required confirmation of information in a durable written form and the right to cancel ‘contracts’ without penalty. Tad’s sites didn’t comply with DSR and CCICAC durable form requirements. If they had complied, consumers would have cancelled when confirmation emails showed they were dealing with Tad rather than the government.

09. Use of email addresses and wording to persuade consumers they were dealing with official government

agencies. They used subject lines like “DVLA Applications” and “Your Driving Licence”.

10. Cutting and pasting consumer details into official site.

11. Use of pre-paid Tad credit cards to pay statutory fees, reinforcing the impression consumers were using the official site.

12. Use of misleading billing descriptors to reinforce the impression the copycats were official.

Disclaimers At the trials, the defendants relied on disclaimers as evidence the sites were not misleading or dishonest. They even argued that trading standards legitimised the sites by insisting disclaimers were used to distinguish them from the official ones. However, both juries disagreed with these views.

Ultimately, legitimate businesses have nothing to hide. They seek to distinguish their brands from competitors by clearly showing who they are and what they sell.

Winter 2018

Journal of Trading Standards

An honest business actively promotes its names across its website and adverts.

Trading standards officers should be suspicious of sites carrying disclaimers, and especially when those disclaimers fail to name traders.

A lot of law surrounds disclaimers.

Some was highlighted by the copycat’s trials and provides important lessons about their use in future cases. In R v Southwood [1987] 1 WLR 1361 Lord Lane dealt with disclaimers and the legal consequences of creating a false impression. He said: “Even if we had… ruled… whether… a sufficient disclaimer should have been left to the jury, we should… have dismissed the appeal.

No reasonable jury, on the facts of this case, could have come to any conclusion other than that the appellant had set out deliberately to mislead prospective purchasers… No reasonable jury could have come to any other conclusion than the disclaimers were simply a… pretence put forward… to escape the consequences of his undoubted fraud.”

This could equally apply to copycat websites and the way Tad used them to disclaim the false impression they created. Expert testimony from Nominet reinforced the view on Tad’s use of disclaimers: “…the presence of the disclaimer is a spurious attempt… to defend… against the suggestion that Internet users are likely to be confused, rather than a genuine attempt to avoid that confusion… “…efforts have been made to ensure that the true identity of the person or entity behind the Domain Name is not revealed. If one wanted visitors to be clear that the website was operated by a person or entity other than the [Government Agency] it would have been a simple task to identify that person or entity.”

The ASA research into copycat sites in July 2014 led them to rule on disclaimers: “We told them to include a prominent disclaimer alongside calls to action such as ‘Apply now’ or similar and the most prominent price statements on each page.

The disclaimer should be clearly worded and presented separately from other information to ensure it was prominent

www.JournalofTradingStandards.co.uk

“Because consumers thought they were contracting with the government, they lacked the intention to contract with Peter Hall’s company, and so the contracts were void.” and would be read by consumers. It should contain sufficient additional information to allow consumers to understand the non-official nature of the service on offer and the additional cost of using that service compared to using the official service directly…”

Basically, the ASA wanted Tad to: make their disclaimers prominent; place them next to, or near, call-to-action buttons; word them clearly; include enough information to understand the additional costs of Tad’s services; and include enough information so consumers knew they were not using the official site. But complying with the ASA’s request would have cost Tad lucrative business.

Disclaimers versus positive legal requirements to identify the trader The European Directive and distance selling laws in the CCICAC recognise the vulnerability of online shoppers. CCICAC aims to stop traders using websites and emails to mislead online consumers.

CCICAC Regulation 13(1) requires traders to provide precontract information in a “clear and comprehensible manner”, identifying the trader in a durable written form (ie: by email, letter or equivalent). CCICAC also provides the right to cancel within 14 days without penalty. If the information requirements are not complied with, the cancellation period is increased to 1 year and 14 days.

In addition, CPUTR Regulations 5 and 6 requires that the trader’s identity, along with other information, is presented in a way that does not deceive the average consumer.

Both CCICAC and CPUTR mean the trader’s identity should be prominently

displayed on home and landing pages, for shoppers to see, not buried in small print.

Disclaimers and the numbers game In 2014, trading standards tried to work compliantly with Tad, to ensure consumers knew they were using Tad’s sites. Officers asked for legally valid disclaimers that identified Tad as an independent commercial service.

Tad initially complied with that request but removed their name from the disclaimers after trading standards officers stopped visiting them. They removed them because analytical software showed the disclaimers trading standards asked for drove down conversion rates and income.

Tad had settled on conversion rates of 5–6%, having conceded they couldn’t fool every visitor. But even this rate made them millions, and they were not about to let trading standards spoil it further.

Emails sent between Hall’s team show the tricks they used to mitigate the effect disclaimers, and other compliance features, were having on their incomes.

Things like: ads that bypassed the home page, where disclaimers were displayed, and delivered consumers to application pages that had none; burying disclaimers in the footers of long webpages or in sidebars where consumers were unlikely to scroll; burying disclaimers in blocks of text making them harder to see or read; using small, poorly contrasted text on busy backgrounds that made disclaimers hard to read; displaying disclaimers and compliance features prominently until approved, then removing or hiding them afterwards; switching between compliant websites and online advertising to satisfy trading standards and search engines, then switching back to non-compliant ones.These tactics show officers need to monitor and evidence sites and advertising over time.

What Op Dougal really shows officers is that it is far better to ensure websites avoid creating misleading impressions that need disclaiming in the first place.

After all, legitimate businesses do not need to hide.

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Metrology

Weighty decision: kilo to be redefined Metrologists have waited a long time to see the decision made: the kilo, ampere, mole and kelvin, the last remaining SI Units, are all to be redefined based on universal constants The kilo is to have a new definition, following a decision made by researchers meeting at the recent 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures held in Versailles in November.

The current definition is based on ‘Le Grand K’, a metal cylinder cast in the late 1800s, and held in a vault outside Paris, which until now has been the prototype underpinning every measurement of mass made anywhere in the world.

Instead the kilo will now be defined

in terms of electrical current. It’s part of a move by metrologists to redefine international units of measurements on universal scientific constants – such as the speed of light, the charge of an electron and the Planck constant - rather than prototypes, which no matter how carefully created and protected, can never be perfectly stable.

‘Le Grand K’ will be consigned to the same graveyard as the platinum-iridium bar which previously underpinned the

metre before it was abandoned in 1983 – these days it’s defined in terms of the speed of light. The Ampere, Mole and Kelvin (and therefore Celsius) will also be redefined meaning for the first time all seven base SI Units will be defined in terms of universal constants.

This kind of big shift doesn’t happen very often in metrology – a field that is defined by its commitment to keeping things uniform.

David Newell of the National Institute

Nominate a Colleague Fellowship Do you know someone who has ‘gone the extra mile’ for our profession?

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Journal of Trading Standards

“It’s part of a move to redefine international units of measurements on scientific constants – such as the speed of light, the charge of an electron and the Planck constant”

of Standards and Technology echoed the sentiments of metrologists around the world, saying “I can’t believe we’re finally getting it done” The change is unlikely to have practical ramifications for enforcement.

It’s anticipated Le Grand K will prove to be about 50 micrograms per billion out – less than the weight of a single eyelash – but the shift from objects to constants is a profound change in perspective for measurement specialists everywhere.

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With early payment discount 2019 rates

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(1) Branch fees are collected nationally. Individual invoices will contain this extra amount where applicable. Current

(3) For new payments by annual, quarterly or monthly direct debit the form must be received by 28th February 2019

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Leading the trading standards profession

Last Word

Where would we be without…

Eleni Chalkidou Eleni is Editor-in-Chief at the Journal of Trading Standards and Director of Communications at CTSI

This issue Hallmarking has a long and illustrious history – indeed, it is considered to be the oldest form of consumer protection in the UK. It has its roots in the 13th century, when Henry III commanded the mayor and aldermen of the City of London to select six goldsmiths in the capital to superintend the craft and assure the fineness of articles made from gold and silver. Ever since, hallmarking has played an essential part in underpinning consumer confidence. Without it we’d have no reliable gauge of authenticty and value.

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It is bizarre how the thought of Hallmarking can transfer you to a moment in life you would otherwise have forgotten. My mind travels to Recklinghausen, West Germany, my prosaic, humdrum birth town known mainly for stiff handshakes and Knackwurst (a thick, extra-seasoned sausage). As a teen I often found myself trying to earn extra pocket money while helping out in my mum’s Greek delicacy shop. An older man approached me with a bag of silver and gold jewellery, which to a 13-year old may only be mildly suspicious, suggesting any of these for 20 Deutsche Mark would make for a splendid Christmas present for my mum. I agreed. I rifled through the bag, pulled out something extra shiny and brought it close to my face. I was of course looking for the marks and a 925 number. He was watching me. “Gute Qualität,” he said. Let me be the judge of that, Mr, I think. “Where are the marks,” I ask?

The jig is up. He snatches the bag off me and he is gone before I can raise the alarm.

Fast-forward 25 years and in another country, marks applied to pieces of precious metal to show that they have been independently tested and verified and therefore conform to all legal standards of purity or fineness, remain as significant as ever. The Hallmarking Act of 1973, as amended, is today enforced by the British Hallmarking Council and trading standards, working closely with the country’s four registered Assay Offices.

There are three compulsory elements of a UK hallmark: a sponsor mark, which indicates the manufacturer or person who submitted an article for hallmarking; a symbol to indicate the standard and purity of the metal, whether gold, silver, platinum or palladium; and the mark of the Assay Office where the item was tested – London uses a leopard’s head, Birmingham an anchor, Sheffield a rose and Edinburgh a castle.

The testing of precious metals has come a long way since Henry III’s edict in 1238; whereas in the past, small fragments of a precious metal item were physically scraped off and exposed to chemical compounds to assess their purity, modern Assay Offices use X-ray fluorescence, a non-destructive form of analysis that takes only about 10-30 seconds to complete.

But there is more to hallmarking than just interesting historical tidbits, esoteric symbols and X-rays. It can be virtually impossible to assess the purity and quality of a precious metal by sight and touch alone, and the high prices attached to articles made from precious metals can make them an attractive target for unscrupulous manufacturers and dealers. This is particularly so with the increasing popularity of online shopping, which makes it common for a consumer to spend a huge sum on an item based solely on a photograph and written description. But as any Shakespeare buff will point out, all that glisters is not gold.

The difference in value between two items which might appear identical can be astronomical; and since for most people the purchase of a such an item – a wedding ring, for example – is loaded with personal and emotional significance, in addition to huge financial expenditure, it is essential to ensure they know exactly what they are getting and can purchase with confidence.

This is why, for Trading Standards, hallmarking is such an important matter, and cuts right to the heart of why the profession exists in the first place. Without hallmarking, consumers would be vulnerable to exploitation from dodgy sellers looking to make an easy profit, as well as dishonest buyers on the hunt for a bargain at someone else’s expense. It is also why the penalties for supplying or offering to supply a fraudulently hallmarked item are so severe; the maximum penalty is a fine and two years’ imprisonment, and golden handcuffs are also a possibility for those who possess items that are incorrectly or fraudulently hallmarked.

Winter 2018

KENYON BLOCK Consultants Specialist Recruitment

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