Priorities and Performance

Trading Standards aims to contribute to the Council's strategic targets by:

• Taking effective action against businesses that deliberately or persistently break the law, particularly those engaged in door to door sales.
• Restricting access for children and young people to harmful age-restricted goods.
• Providing support and advice to Kent businesses and consumers to support a fair and safe trading environment.
• Taking effective enforcement action in relation to the storage and supply of dangerous goods.
• Maintaining food standards and helping people to make informed, healthy choices.
• Preventing the spread of animal disease and taking action in cases of unnecessary suffering of livestock at critical control points.

Our performance

Each year we survey a proportion of the consumers who have contacted us for advice and businesses who have either received a visit from us or asked for advice or information. Below are some key results from our most recent user surveys.

Consumer Advice Service User Survey - year ending March 2010

• 98% found advice easy to understand
• 92% found officers courteous and polite at all times
• 90% felt they were treated fairly
• 85% of people given advice followed it, at least partially.
• 61% looked online for our contact details
  

What consumers told us :

Where people are unhappy with the service they receive from us, the major reason is because we do not investigate or sort out their consumer problem.   This is because we have an "intelligence led" approach to all our work and use campaigns to find out the extent of a problem or to target known problems. This benefits the whole community by concentrating our activities on those issues causing the most problems. It means we rarely investigate individual complaints about traders, but we do record all information supplied to us as this is a vital part of our intelligence gathering.

A "Good Trader" scheme - Consumers frequently request help in finding reputable traders.Our "Buy with Confidence" scheme gives consumers access to a directory of traders who have proved their commitment to trading fairly.

Increase information provision - We will continue to update and improve the information available on this website. Additions to the site include an interactive food label, local scam warnings and helpful national links for consumers. We have also produced a Consumer Newletter to let consumers know what we have done with information provided to us.

 

Business survey - year ended March 2010

Our Business Survey includes both business visited and those who contacted us for help or advice. Below are the results for the year ending March 2010.

• 93% felt they were treated fairly
• 91% agreed the contact was helpful
  

What business told us :

Providing clear and easy to understand advice and information is important - A large range of business guidance notes and leaflets are available on this site, together with links to other business resources such as Ask Cedric and Business Link. 

Some of the rules and regulations we advise on are complex, and the legal and technical languague can sometimes be hard to understand. We will try to make sure our guidance is given in plain English and our officers are always happy to talk to businesses to explain anything that needs clarification.

We have a business information stand and officers attend business seminars and exhibitions.

We have introduced a "Buy with Confidence" scheme which benefits reputable traders.

 

TS Alert messages feedback

TS alerts are email messages sent to representatives of community groups throughout Kent.  They provide warnings about local scams and doorstep criminal activity that has been reported to Kent Trading Standards. Group members then distribute the messages to their local community.

We asked the group members to give us their feedback on the system and the messages and some improvements to the layout and content of the messages have been identified. We now also publish current messages on this website.

Representatives told us that 100% of community members feeding back to them said they found the messages useful and 96% said they were informative.

 

Buy with Confidence Scheme feedback

We ask traders to hand out feedback forms to all their customers who then return the forms to us. Since the introduction of the scheme in Kent almost more than 3,000 consumers who have used BWC traders have given their feedback in this way.  

What do customers think about Kent BWC traders?

• 99% are satisfied with the quality of work
• 99% are satisfied with the level of service received
• 96% are satisfied with the value for money

Typical comments include:

"Very helpful and friendly, explained everything thoroughly"

"Excellent, friendly, helpful, value for money, great job"

"Very professional and efficient and customer friendly. Would not hesitate to use again and recommend to others".