• Ensuring fair dealing for Newham residents
Newham Trading Standards service is working hard to ensure residents receive fair treatment when spending their hard earned money in local shops.
The service has conducted 151 visits to retailers in Green Street, including clothing, hardware, and pound shops. The visits were to assess pricing compliance, restrictive statements, and sale offers.
Unfortunately, the cost of living crisis is affecting consumers and businesses and there were some concerns that some information, pricing and advertising were misleading for shoppers.
The aim of the Trading Standards visits is to create a fair trading environment and level playing field for all businesses, by ensuring that all items are clearly marked with prices.
Signage or statements claiming to restrict a consumer’s statutory rights to a refund, repair, or replacement were discovered by officers.
Officers found that 53% of businesses had non-compliant refund notices, misleading adverts, or failed to operate in accordance with the law or pricing practice guidance. It was also noted that 8.61% of businesses were not displaying their prices correctly and 3.97% of businesses did not clearly display reduced price offers.
All non-compliant signage, or misleading price offers were immediately removed, and dependent upon the severity of the issues identified, will be revisited for compliance checks.
However, it was positive to see that 47% of businesses were operating in accordance with best practice and providing fair, open, and transparent pricing. Newham Trading Standards will continue with the pricing checks, and tackle non-compliant pricing practices borough-wide.
Councillor Carleene Lee-Phakoe, Cabinet Member for Crime & Community Safety said:
“During this cost of living crisis, we want all our residents and visitors to be treated in an open, fair, honest, and transparent manner”.
“We must place our residents and visitors in a position where they can make an informed purchasing decision. At a time when every penny counts, we must make sure shoppers are properly protected.
“Newham Trading Standards service is working to support business growth and investment within the borough, which will help build a thriving local economy”.
“Our Trading Standards team are working hard to ensure that they identify any issues of non-compliance within the borough, and will continue to take decisive action where necessary, applying the appropriate level of advice or intervention.”
For further information on pricing, please visit: https://www.businesscompanion.info/en/quick-guides/pricing-and-payment/providing-price-information
