Olympics need trading standards

The 2012 Olympics. A big thing for trading standards. Today I chaired a meeting of trading standards colleagues from the London councils and from local authorities outside of London who are hosting events.

Big concerns about the lack of resources to tackle the counterfeiters, ticket touts and other rogues who will look to hijack the Olympic Games opportunity to rip off consumers, UK and overseas visitors, and leave a bad taste in the mouths of those who will be here to enjoy the spectacle and the experience.

The good thing is that I can see the professionalism and resolve of trading standards practitioners kicking in. The bad thing is that they need much more real help from central and local government and from the Olympic authorities and business to be able to keep the Olympic parks and the hinterland fair and clean of consumer crime. I shall be writing to Ministers and others to press the case even at this late hour.

Trading Standards in a fight for survival

We really are in a fight for survival.

I'm seeing local councils imposing cuts of 40 and 50% on their trading standards service budgets. Most of those services are too small anyway and to have to absorb that sort of hit will prove injurious at best and fatal at worst.

Yesterday BBC Breakfast did a short expose of the work and risk TS faces. Trading standards is a real force for the good. I think the BBC understands that. Most of its viewers will. I'm not sure though if the Local Government Minister Bob Neill MP does.

For the purposes of the BBC programme he gave a statement "Every bit of the public sector needs to do its bit to help pay off the massive budget deficit. Government has been living a credit card lifestyle and its time to pay off the bills. Town hall trading standards should focus their finite resources where public welfare is most at risk. This means tackling the like of cowboy builders and shops which peddle alcohol to children, but not wasting time on prosecuting greengrocers for using imperial scales."

Either the minister knows too little of the work and impact of trading standards or he just sees it as fair game for a political shot. Believe me minister if you did take the trouble to experience just a day with my trading standards colleagues you would see the intelligence driven and courageous way in which they tackle fraud, crime, scams, illegal sales of alcohol, tobacco, knives and more to the young and never give a thought to greengrocers selling in imperial or metric.

You should be applauding trading standards and helping it sustain its help to consumers and businesses in need, not looking to throw a poorly informed brick at it when it needs your support most. After all, your coalition government colleague Vince Cable MP has just recently stated the value he at least attaches to front line trading standards. Perhaps you don't agree?

Job losses too big to handle

Why does it feel like we are losing more than we are gaining? Probably because it is true. I've just finished my monthly task of writing my column for our TS Today magazine. I am usually inspired at the prospect (seriously!) but this time I was composing my thoughts on the back of the massive funding cuts to the grants to local councils announced by the Government yesterday. The Local Government Association, LGA, are predicting 140,000 job losses.

I fear for so many of my trading standards friends and colleagues, our TSI members. They are all fantastic professionals dedicated to their task but this funding sword is being waved in all directions as it cuts the flesh and bones of council services. TSI is 130 years old next year and our members have always been predominantly employed in local government. The health of the profession is entwined with the health of local authorities. Their sickness is our sickness. I don't blame councils because they have an impossible task in trying to balance priorities. That doesn't mean that I feel like staying in the same emergency ward as them though. There has to be another way if we are to sustain the trading standards profession as we know it and that is where my interest is. Inspiration returning!

Trading Standards or Tuition Fees?!

It's been another manic week for me and for us all at TSI. The Government's plans to change the machinery for consumer representation and protection, to abolish quangos and others and to use the broad shoulders of trading standards to carry even more of a consumer enforcement role is really churning the waters. I hope those shoulders can withstand the weight but with councils cutting their already meagre budgets by 30-40 percent even the strongest of trading standards services are going to wobble or fall.

What a day we chose yesterday too to take our trading standards case to Parliament! We had to run the gauntlet of thousands of protesting students, police and barriers to reach the House of Commons and then once we were inside and ready to lobby MPs and Peers we fell foul of a little debate on tuition fees!

Not to be deterred we scoured the building and managed to grab the attention of those MPs that had taken a break from the debating chamber and I am sure that they will all have been convinced by the strength of our case. The country without a strong front line trading standards workforce is unthinkable at a time when people and businesses needs them most.

Never a dull moment and the best way to take a break from a week like that is to get on my motorbike and enjoy that tarmac - snow and ice permitting!

A Leap of Faith?

It's been quite a week - again. Tuesday saw the House of Lords debate the 2nd reading of the Public Bodies Bill. A Lords constitutional committee had earlier been extraordinarily critical of the Bill and the proposed use by Government of secondary legislation to ignite its quangos bonfire and limit Parliamentary debate - the so called Henry VIII process.

On Tuesday scores of Peers queued up to say their piece on the Bill, mostly expressing concerns about the Bill itself but also about the many public bodies affected by proposed abolition or change. Trading standards, Citizens Advice, local government, and Consumer Focus all featured. There was even a quarrel over the definition of what is a consumer. There was clearly considerable concern across the floor over the proposed loss of consumer law enforcement from the OFT.

Is this really a sensible time to place even greater reliance on local authorities who are even as I type having or choosing to slash their trading standards budgets? Lord Borrie, a previous OFT Director General quoted my words from our latest TSI TS Today publication: 'a leap of faith, I just hope it isn't a leap in the dark'.

Time will tell but I sense we are only at the beginning of this quantum leap.

TSI president calls upon council leaders to recognise 'extraordinary circumstances'

Yesterday our TSI President, Baroness Christine Crawley, kindly hosted myself and a TSI team in the House of Lords.

First we all met with Baroness Royall to talk about the issues raised by the Public Bodies Bill for trading standards, consumers and legitimate business and how she might respond, as leader of the opposition, to these concerns. Her interest and support are a fantastic boost to TSI.

Baroness Crawley then took time out of her hectic schedule to personally sign more than 200 letters to leaders of councils calling for them to recognise the 'extraordinary circumstances' trading standard services face and the need for sustained funding.

Those letters went out last night. This morning they should be in the hands of the people who can and will influence the funding of trading standards services. I hope they appreciate that these are indeed, as Christine says, 'extraordinary circumstances' and take action to sustain the funding needed to support the vital work done to protect consumers and legitimate business.

Supporting small business

Good to see that the Prime Minister has asked Lord Young to take a hard look at how small and medium sized businesses can be helped more. Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs, employ 60% of the workforce and are major players in our UK economic recovery ambitions, including the switch from a reducing public sector workforce to a growing private sector one.

It surprises some to know that the Trading Standard Institute,TSI, is a self-financing not for profit SME as well as a professional body representing trading standards practitioners. Our members work in both the public and private sectors too and that makes us uniquely well placed to understand the pressures and burdens on small businesses. We should be extraordinarily well placed to comment to Lord Young. He says he wants to listen and so I shall be sending an invitation.

I always say that front line trading standards people are as much about wealth creation as those in front line business. Why would they want to do anything but work with and support good business, enterprise and employment? It suits government sometimes to paint trading standards and other local government based regulators as a burden rather than the help they actually are. It's my job to help Lord Young appreciate that.

Goodbye Regional Development Agencies

I was interested yesterday to see Vince Cable announce the first 25 LEPS, Local Enterprise Partnerships. I shall be curious to see how many more follow and whether the loss of the RDAs, Regional Development Agencies, proves to be significant to the economic wellbeing of different regions in England.

Regionalism and localism are not easy bedfellows and that is not always of help to local trading standards services who need to always have a framework to combine talent, effort and capacity to maximise impact in favour of consumers, good business, local and yes regional economies. The government funding available to support LEPS looks to be about a third of that which had rested with the RDAs. Only time will tell whether this suffices.

At the moment there are vast gaps in the spread of LEPS and areas and regions like Lancashire and the South West will have no enterprise body to bid for central funds until, and if, they establish LEPS. Critics have labelled LEPS as a fragmented network of toothless talking shops. Let us hope they are wrong.

The Local Growth White Paper, launched this week by Nick Clegg, pins hopes on councils being better enterprise supporters and catalysts. It also recognises the key role of well maintained trading standards for that purpose. Bottom up regionalism built on the new found localism will be essential to trading standards services performing as Mr Clegg wants. LEPS and political preferences should not get in the way of operational and strategic pragmatism.

Funding for trading standards

This is always a big issue for a small service especially when delivered by cash strapped councils who have now been told by the Chancellor that they can expect 27% less Government funding over the next 4 years.

The norm seems to be that trading standards services across the country are being told to find savings of 25%-40% which looks like the normal salami slicing approach towards council services that don't enjoy the funding protection of ring fenced money. So it was encouraging to meet with BIS, Business, Innovation and Skills, officials yesterday to further understand how the BIS 'consumer landscape' proposals might translate into funding support for reinforcing the trading standards role that Vince Cable has attached such weight to.

BIS will look to transfer current, and perhaps new funds currently held centrally, to local government to support the essential national enforcement role of trading standards in areas like illegal money lending, scams and fraud, intel, e-commerce, regional and national coordination and more.

These funds currently expire in 2011 but I could see yesterday how resolved BIS is to sustain that funding for at least the four years after that. That will send a strong message to local authorities and we shall want to ensure they look to reinforce their trading standards capability, not salami slice and disable it.

Building the new consumer landscape begins......

When Vince Cable issued his BIS consumer landscape review statement earlier this month he made it very clear that the future was to be built on the twin pillars of Citizens Advice and Trading Standards.

TSI and its members delivering trading standards across the local government spectrum have always had a strong and productive relationship with Citizens Advice and with the nearly 400 CABx spread across England and Wales. Similarly with Citizens Advice Scotland and its member CABx.

Following the Secretary of State's announcement however, that relationship must reach new levels of collaboration and productivity. We must seek to ensure the transfer of the Consumer Direct GB helpline to Citizens Advice serves to be even more supportive of consumers, and trading standards services and the business community. They have a reliance on its information and data in the improvement of business behaviour towards consumers and the enforcement of consumer and other criminal law against the rogue element.

Today I met with the CEO of Citizens Advice and together we have begun to create the foundations of the new consumer landscape with our two organisations at its heart. We shall need to embrace many others, including local government, the private sector and our colleagues in the devolved nations. We are confident of meeting the challenge set by the coalition Government but we shall need its wholehearted support. There is little time to waste.

Local Government Funding takes a real hit

Local government has suffered a real body blow in losing 27% of its central funding over the next 4 years. Quite how such savage cuts can hope to give councils a fighting chance of using their new found localism opportunity is at the moment beyond me. Shifting service, operational and funding roles and responsibilities away from the state i.e. Government to town halls would be a challenge at any time but to do so and in parallel take away substantive funds is an unenviable one.

Small but essential front line services like Trading Standards are incredibly vulnerable regardless of any urgings from BIS or other parts of Government to councils to support them. When the Leader of the Local Government Group talks of the loss of 'dedicated professionals' as part of the 1 in 10 council jobs to go over these next four years we have to be concerned at the prospective loss of Trading Standards professionals so critical to supporting businesses, consumers and communities at this time of need.

Local authorities have to find different ways of delivering services and we are seeing some respond already by merging operations, outsourcing and similar. We must help them to make the right decisions for Trading Standards and the citizens that rely on them.