ACTSO report on local trading standards services

‘The impacts and outcomes of local trading standards services’ is a recently published report by the Association of Chief Trading Standards Officers.  It can be found here: https://www.actso.org.uk/reports/The%20Value%20of%20Trading%20Standards%20Report.pdf

The report highlights the value of the work of local trading standards services across England and Wales. In previous years, there has been no national data available on the performance of local authority trading standards services and as a result, it has been difficult to demonstrate the impact that trading standards makes. 

In 2018/19, the work of trading standards services in seeking to halt criminal behaviour and bring to justice those who break the law has seen:

• Over 1,100 defendants prosecuted
• At least £42.6m detriment prevented by trading standards activity
• Almost £4.9m in Proceeds of Crime recovered
• £26.8m not handed over to criminals through rapid response
• Over 11,000 scam victims supported

Other highlights include:

• Over 1.3m unsafe products seized or removed from the market, worth an estimated £16.9m
• 22% average failure rate on alcohol test purchases by young people
• More than 15.3m illegal cigarettes seized
• £8.7m value of illegal tobacco products seized
• 3,399 businesses were identified as supplying food that was misdescribed, did not correctly declare allergens, contained toxic or illegal components or was involved in food fraud.
• 2,146 premises were tested for alcohol sales
• 1,189 premises were tested for tobacco sales
• The average failure rate for tobacco test purchases was 10%  
• 2,382 premises were tested for other products (including knives)  
• Illicit tobacco was seized from 944 premises
• 15,331,050 illicit cigarettes were seized, worth an estimated £7,665,525
• 3,444,012 grams of illicit hand-rolling tobacco was seized, worth £1,033,203
• 72,274 niche tobacco products (including shisha) was seized, worth at least £35,898
• Illicit alcohol was seized from 85 premises ; 49,480 litres of alcohol was seized