What Trading Standards do
Swindon Trading Standards carries out a range of functions that serve to protect consumers from unfair business practices, and to help businesses comply with their legal obligations.
The functions of Trading Standards
Rogue traders and doorstep crime
- Protecting consumers against rogue traders who undertake fraudulent and /or dangerous home maintenance or building work
Product safety
- Ensuring consumer goods are safe and do not present a risk to health or cause harm.
Weights and measures
- Ensuring that weighing and measuring equipment in use for trade is accurate as well as quantity declarations made on products
Animal feed and fertilizers
- Registration and inspection of animal feed establishments and ensuring that both fertilisers and animal feeds are correctly labelled, safe to use and do not present a risk to animals and the human food chain
Animal health and welfare
- Ensuring the welfare of livestock and that keepers of livestock adhere to disease control measures
Illicit cigarettes, tobacco and alcohol
- Reducing the sale of illicit cigarettes, tobacco and alcohol from Swindon shops or residents
Scams
- Intervention with victims of mass marketing, phishing, romance, finance scams, etc and assistance with safeguarding measures where required
Landlords and letting agents
- Protecting tenants against prohibited fees and ensuring that property agents belong to an approved redress scheme and client money protection scheme
Fair trading
- Protecting consumers by dealing with misleading statements about the price, quality or description of goods and services
Age restricted sales
- Carrying out regular checks to ensure traders do not sell age restricted products or services to underage persons
Business advice
- Providing advice and assistance to businesses on all aspects of Trading Standards legislation to raise their awareness and help them comply with their legal responsibilities. This includes Swindon businesses on the ‘Buy With Confidence’ scheme.
Trading Standards has a range of options to tackle behaviour where businesses break the law deliberately or accidentally.
If you are a consumer requiring advice or have a complaint, contact the Consumer Advice Service via our partners at Citizens Advice. Your complaint will be referred to us if Citizens Advice believes it may require investigation by Trading Standards.
We are not able to investigate or take action on all matters referred to us and our resources are prioritised in order to tackle the most detrimental issues to local businesses