Trading standards

This fact sheet is aimed primarily at anyone who is dissatisfied with the way a council’s trading standards office has dealt with their complaint about a trader, or the way in which a council has carried out its investigative, monitoring and enforcement work, and may be considering making a complaint to the Ombudsman.

A local trader has broken consumer protection law and I have reported this to the local trading standards office, but it has not pursued the matter. Can the Ombudsman help me?

In some cases, yes. But there are some matters we are not allowed to look at by law:

  • We cannot deal with a complaint about the ‘rogue’ trader. We can only look at the way your complaint about the trader was handled by the council. You may have legal rights against the trader and these are not affected by your complaints either to the Ombudsman or to the council.
  • We cannot normally deal with a complaint about the merits of a council’s properly-taken decision – for example, a decision not to investigate your complaint or not prosecute the trader. Councils have discretion on trading standards matters as to whether, and to what extent, to investigate a particular complaint: and their decisions are taken in the general interests of the public, rather than the interest of the individual complainant. So complaining to the council does not necessarily mean that you will have no need to take action against the trader yourself.
  • If the council does prosecute the trader, we cannot look at what goes on in court.
  • In most cases a council will refer complaints about civil law matters, such as breach of contract, to Citizens Advice. See the Consumer rights page on the Gov.uk website.

But we can consider complaints about:

  • whether the council has properly considered what level of investigation to carry out, and
  • the way in which any investigation was conducted.

I am a trader and I am dissatisfied with the way the council has treated me. Can the Ombudsman help me?

Yes, in some circumstances. But the law prevents us from considering some matters.

We cannot consider complaints about the commencement or conduct of court proceedings, but we may be able to consider complaints about what happened before the council decided to start court proceedings.

We may be able to consider complaints about advice and guidance given by the council, or that it has failed to follow its policies and procedures.

How do I complain?

You should normally complain to the council first. Councils often have more than one stage in their complaints procedure and you will usually have to complete all stages before we will look at your complaint.

Then, if you are unhappy with the outcome, or the council is taking too long to look into the matter – we think 12 weeks is reasonable – you can complain to us.

Usually, you should complain to us within 12 months of when you first knew about the problem. If you leave it any later, we may not be able to help.

For more information on how to complain, please read our step by step process to making a complaint

If you can consider my complaint what will the Ombudsman look for?

We consider whether the council has done something wrong in the way it dealt with your complaint which has caused you problems. Some of the issues we can look at are if the council:

  • delayed in dealing with your complaint or failed to keep you informed
  • did not properly consider whether to investigate the complaint, or
  • having decided to investigate, did not carry out an adequate and timely investigation; and did not keep proper records of the complaint and any investigation.

What happens if the Ombudsman finds that the council was at fault?

If we find errors in the way that the council made its decisions about how to deal with your complaint, we would consider whether the council would have been likely to make different decisions if it had not made those errors. If so, we might recommend that the council:

  • take action to put the matter right, such as to correct mistakes in records or, where appropriate, to carry out another investigation
  • apologise for what went wrong
  • we may ask the council to make a payment to you. Whether we do this and the amount we suggest will depend on how you have been affected by what has gone wrong, or
  • where we find fault with the council’s procedures, we will often recommend that the council makes changes so that the same problem does not occur again.

Examples of some complaints we have considered

Mr X complained the council was at fault for failing to investigate a rogue builder. We found the council had not responded to an email and a telephone call during its investigation. The council had already changed its process to prevent this happening again. We considered this reasonable but also recommended the council pay Mr X £100 in recognition of his distress.
Mr X complained that the Council’s trading standards team failed to investigate a report he made about an estate agency. Mr X also said the Council failed to properly address his complaint about the failings of the trading standards team. There was fault by the Council because it did not inform Mr X directly about its investigation. However, we found this failing did not cause Mr X significant enough injustice to warrant further investigation.

Other sources of information

Most councils have lots of information and advice about trading standards and consumer protection issues on their own websites.

Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 03454 04 05 06 or see their website.

Our fact sheets give some general information about the most common type of complaints we receive but they cannot cover every situation. If you are not sure whether we can look into your complaint, please contact us.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman provides a free, independent and impartial service. We consider complaints about the administrative actions of councils and some other authorities. We cannot question what a council has done simply because someone does not agree with it. If we find something has gone wrong, such as poor service, service failure, delay or bad advice and that a person has suffered as a result the Ombudsman aims to get it put right by recommending a suitable remedy.

October 2023

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