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As consumers of all ages face a rising tide of scams and other threats, arming them with information they can use to protect themselves should be a key priority for the public and private sectors alike
Helen Nugent, Freelance Contributor
Posted 13 January 2025 | JoTS Online
Content Tags: Analysis|Inside Trading Standards|National
When the broadcaster Moira Stuart nearly lost money to a bank scam earlier this year, she felt the same as many other people who have found themselves in a similar position: “absolutely devastated, embarrassed and angry with myself”. Thankfully a sharp-eyed cashier prevented her from losing thousands of pounds, but Stuart still said that the intrusion into her personal life would stay with her.
Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud – in which someone is tricked into sending money to a criminal posing as a genuine payee – is frighteningly common. According to the banking body UK Finance, it resulted in losses of almost £460m in 2023. That amounted to 232,429 cases.
As fraudsters become ever more sophisticated, the consumer detriment continues to rise. But, like many things in life, when it comes to scams, prevention is better than cure. That is certainly the view of Trading Standards Officers working hard to educate the public. “People need different education on different things throughout their lives but, early on, school-age children need to start off knowing what their consumer rights are, knowing where to go to complain, and giving them a little bit of literacy on what to do if something goes wrong,” says Alison Farrar, CTSI joint Lead Officer for Consumer Education and Chair of the Consumer Empowerment Alliance. “What are the processes? What can you do to protect yourself? What should you be doing as a consumer?”
We’re just firefighting in Trading Standards now... it’s heartbreaking to see younger people becoming victims earlier of crimes and scams and not knowing their consumer rights
Farrar believes that, from a relatively young age, people need something in their toolkit to help them recognise their rights but also identify potential scams. She says that it’s especially important for the younger generation when they are making decisions for the first time, such as opening a bank account or buying a car, because at that point, they are more vulnerable. “It’s really good for people to understand the very basics of how things work before they go on and do the more complex transactions that happen as they go through life,” she says.
Louise Baxter, also joint Lead Officer for Consumer Advice and Education, agrees. She points to statistics revealing that only 17 per cent of people will admit that they are situationally vulnerable. Wearing one of her other hats, Baxter runs the Consumer Friend website, which aims to make consumer rights easy for everyone.
“What we try to do is provide the information in a way that is inclusive,” says Baxter. “It’s written for nine to 12-year-olds. Also, I don’t particularly think that campaigns for education purposes work if you target vulnerability. I think you need to have a campaign that is inclusive so it lands for everybody because if people are labelled as vulnerable, you lose them instantly. They won’t want to be in that particular cohort.”
She continues: “We need to rethink how we do it, and build all of our services inclusively to ensure that everybody can access them, which should scoop up all of that vulnerability.”
Limited resources
It’s no secret that dwindling resources and a lack of investment in Trading Standards have had significant impacts across the board. One of the areas most affected has been consumer education, as Baxter explains. “There’s been a massive knock-on effect on base-level consumer information and education and what consumers are actually aware of. Businesses are making it more difficult to complain, and consumers don’t know what their rights are.
“We’re also moving into a world of litigious and vexatious consumers because they’re getting frustrated, and they’re thinking they’re entitled to a lot more than they actually are.”
Baxter also thinks it’s important to differentiate between consumer education and business education. “We need to simplify it for everybody. The problem we have with education is trying to make it relevant, accessible and easy to understand. It shouldn’t be reams and reams of words and information that consumers are then having to decipher when they have a problem. Because when you’ve got a problem, it’s really stressful.”
Farrar is likewise concerned about the scaling back of consumer education work. She points to fewer and fewer consumer education campaigns and a decline in the number of outreach programmes, not to mention an increased workload meaning that Trading Standards services can no longer devote as much time to things like over-50s clubs and school visits. She says: “You can do massive campaigns across social media. But unless you’re doing that kind of face-to-face and practical stuff with people, I don’t think it really sinks in in the same way because people don’t apply what they hear to what actually happens to them in real life.”
She adds: “We’re just firefighting in Trading Standards now… it’s heartbreaking to see younger people becoming victims earlier of crimes and scams and not knowing their consumer rights. But that translates into later life because everybody who’s at school now will end up in a profession. They will have a job. They will be consumers all of their lives.”
What next?
Looking to the future, both Farrar and Baxter hope that more can be done to boost the work of Trading Standards and therefore help consumers better protect themselves – but it will all cost money, and that money needs to come from new sources.
Baxter says: “I think that the new Government allows us an opportunity to have a real consumer focus. I also think that we can’t do it on our own. I think we need to do it in partnership with the private sector where, historically, it’s always been ‘us and them’. We’re not in competition with each other. We need to work together to ensure that we get effective messages to consumers.”
Farrar is keen for consumer education to be included in the school curriculum – which is also one of the recommendations in CTSI’s 2024 Manifesto.
“There should be a lot more around preparing people for life,” she says. “And it shouldn’t just be things like consumer rights. It should be more around the stuff we used to do about recognising fakes and safety of products and that kind of thing, so you’re protecting yourself physically as well as financially.”
Key messages
These resources can help consumers and businesses help themselves:
Consumer Friend provides simple, accessible information about consumer rights.
Friends Against Scams empowers consumers and helps support victims.
Citizens Advice has useful consumer resources on a wide range of topics.
Business Companion provides free, expert-written guidance to businesses.
CTSI has a dedicated section on its website which helps consumers find their local Trading Standards service – many of which provide locally-tailored consumer advice of their own – as well as links to further useful resources such as the Approved Code Scheme, the UK ICC and other relevant organisations.
PLEASE NOTE: This content originally appeared on our standalone Journal of Trading Standards website (www.journaloftradingstandards.co.uk), which we are gradually migrating over to the Journal's new home on the CTSI website. Please bear with us while we complete this process. This will not affect the production of our Print Edition.
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Content Tags: Analysis|Inside Trading Standards|National
