We made Freedom of Information requests to 187 trading standards services in England, Wales and Scotland to ask about capacity and performance.
The responses expose shocking differences in staffing levels depending on where people live and services in some areas stretched to the point where it's impossible for them to effectively carry out essential work such as intercepting fake and dangerous products, rooting out misleading food claims and cracking down on cowboy builders.
Read on to find out how your area compares and why Which? believes an overhaul of the system is needed.
The trading standards postcode lottery
There is very little official data on staffing levels or budgets for trading standards services across the country, largely because they’re run by local authorities and often operate quite independently of each other.
So we used the Freedom of Information Act to establish where there are gaps in resources, finding a postcode lottery across Britain with jaw-dropping differences in staffing levels depending on where you live.
In Orkney, there are almost five trading standards staff – the equivalent of nearly 21 staff per 100,000 people.
But in Enfield, North London, there’s just one full-time officer (plus a one-day-a-week admin assistant and a one-day-a-week contractor) responsible for enforcing more than 290 pieces of legislation. That’s just 0.43 staff per 100,000 people.
With the exception of the City of London (which has a lot of businesses and relatively few residents), the best-staffed areas per head of population are mainly rural, with 11 Welsh authorities in the top 15.
This may be because of differences in the devolved government as well as varying demographic and geographical issues.
Best and worst-staffed trading standards authorities
Here are the 10 best and worst-staffed trading standards authorities in our analysis, ordered by staff per 100,000 people:
Most staff per 100,000 people
Fewest staff per 100,000 people
Data from local authorities in July to November 2024. We couldn’t include Northern Ireland as it’s run differently – with a national service that covers many aspects of trading standards work, but not product safety and food standards.Check your area
You can use our interactive map to check how well or poorly staffed your local trading standards office is.
Find out more: .Why are services stretched?
Many services face problems recruiting and, with a large number of long-serving staff approaching retirement or having already retired, there’s a shortage of skills and the potential for worse to come. But there are also major funding issues.
a membership organisation for trading standards professionals – says that spending on trading standards services has been cut by more than 50% over the past decade and staffing levels have fallen by 30% to 50% over the same period.Earlier this year, John Herriman, chief executive of the CTSI, said that more than a decade of cuts had left departments overstretched, with the system ‘no longer working effectively’.
The number of laws trading standards services are responsible for enforcing has risen over the past few years and there are significant extra challenges from new products and increasingly complex global supply chains and international markets.
Growing concerns
The concerns of trading standards officers are echoed by many others, from shopkeepers to food safety experts.
Earlier this year, the Association of Convenience Stores called for extra resources for trading standards to deal with what it called the ‘rising tide’ of illegal vapes and underage sales.
Save Face, which works with people who have suffered problems from unlicensed cosmetic procedures, has raised concerns about inconsistencies across trading standards teams in how proactively they police and enforce legislation banning cosmetic fillers and Botox for under-18s. It blamed budgetary and resource limitations.
Meanwhile, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said that the number of food standards-allocated posts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (trading standards don’t do food standards work in Scotland), has fallen by 45.1% in the decade to 2022. It said that this risked compromising food standards in future.
Find out more: .
The impact on services
About two thirds of trading standards services that answered our question about allocating resources said that low staffing levels meant they couldn’t investigate tip-offs at least some of the time.
They’re facing a constant battle in choosing where to focus resources, and some say they’re having to deprioritise certain areas of work – most commonly proactive surveillance (such as routine inspections and test purchases), weights and measures work and intellectual property issues.
The impact of funding cuts on the action taken to protect consumers is evident at Enfield Council. It cut its trading standards team from four officers to 1.5 (the equivalent of one full-time role and one part-time role) in 2023 – leaving the reduced team responsible for enforcing almost 300 pieces of legislation. Enfield managed one prosecution and six seizures of products in the 2023-24 financial year, but no routine inspections, test purchases or cautions. The year before the cuts, its trading standards seized more than 28,000 packs of smuggled cigarettes, 14.5kg of smuggled tobacco and 1,300 vapes. It investigated more than 1,200 complaints and enquiries.These decisions have critical knock-on effects. Without checks on meat entering the food chain, we risk another horsemeat scandal. Without controls on unsafe building materials, we risk another Grenfell Tower tragedy.
undefinedFind out more: .Why an overhaul is needed
Our research shows that consumers can no longer rely on the enforcement system to protect them.
We believe trading standards services don’t always have the resources or skills to deal effectively with the breadth of complex issues they're responsible for. We believe that they lack effective strategic oversight because their work is determined and prioritised locally, despite much of it having national relevance.
So we're calling for the whole consumer enforcement system to be overhauled, with more scrutiny of its effectiveness, better intelligence sharing and more oversight.
Rocio Concha, Which? director of policy and advocacy, said: ''The government could be spending taxpayers’ money more wisely. Without urgent reform to the current system, there could be disastrous consequences for consumers, responsible businesses and economic growth.
'Which? is calling for the government to look at overhauling the consumer enforcement system as part of its spending review, with more scrutiny of its effectiveness, better use of intelligence, sharing of services, and more oversight and accountability.'
Find out more: .What does trading standards say?
Valerie Simpson, chairperson of the Association of Chief Trading Standards Officers (ACTSO) said that she believed investment was needed to support new apprentices into the profession.
But she added: 'We do not believe that another review of consumer protection structures will address the issues.'
Fiona Richardson, chief officer for Trading Standards Scotland, said: 'The declining workforce coupled with an increasing range of legislation to enforce is creating serious issues for the service. Prioritisation and effective use of intelligence is required to ensure trading standards can continue to prevent and tackle consumer detriment.'
John Herriman, chief executive at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI), said: 'We welcome this latest research from Which?, which does reflect many of the challenges and issues that we have highlighted for some time. In 2024, we called on the next government to provide greater investment in the Trading Standards service to protect consumers and businesses, and to review the funding model to put the service on a more sustainable and secure footing.
'This is crucial because an effective Trading Standards workforce is the backbone of a strong economy, underpins consumer and business confidence and, ultimately, supports the government's aim for economic growth. Our workforce is also critical in helping protect the public from unsafe products, financial loss and harm, and we're at the very forefront of identifying new and emerging risks.
'We're acutely aware of the financial pressures that Local Authority Trading Standards services have faced over at least the past decade. These constraints have necessitated Local Authorities to continually adapt and innovate. It's a testament to the hard work of Local Authority teams how the profession has evolved and is rolling with the punches. Recent initiatives to future-proof the profession include investing in new apprenticeships, adopting an intelligence-led model to help prioritise work, and building effective partnerships both locally and nationally and these have yielded some impressive results. Last year, Trading Standards helped to prevent more than £600m of consumer detriment, and our work has helped to save lives and protect consumers.
'We, along with other partners in the Trading Standards profession are very keen to fully understand the findings from the Which? survey. Together with regulators, national and local government and other partners we will continue to work to identify these and other issues to help us to anticipate, plan and respond to these and other challenges.'
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/trading-standards-postcode-lottery-revealed-aP3TX4u6v2rs