Trading Standards officers provide advice and information to local businesses to help ensure they comply with trading standards legislation. Basic advice is available from our officers free of charge.
Basic Advice
Advice is available about all trading standards legislation including:
- fair trading - terms and conditions, pricing, descriptions, package travel, estate agency
- product safety
- age-restricted sales
- legal metrology - average quantity, testing scales or weights, pub measures
- intellectual property - trademarks, copyright, designs, patents and passing-off
- hallmarking
- consumer credit
- animal health
Read more about food hygiene or food standards online. In addition, find out more about health and safety at work.
Our officers are only able to provide free advice to businesses based in York. This will usually involve providing some general advice and sign-posting to sources of further information and guidance. This is often sufficient for dealing with initial simple enquiries.
We would recommend you look at the free to use advice and guidance provided online through the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, Business Companion website.
Consultancy
Where more detailed or bespoke help and assistance is required then the officer’s time would be cost recoverable, for instance in:
- designing or approving labels
- examining products for safety compliance
- approving your terms of business
- visiting your premises to test equipment or conduct an inspection or audit
Our rate of recovery is reviewed annually and is currently £84.00+VAT per hour until Friday 31 March 2023.
Primary Authority Partnerships
We also offer Primary Authority Partnerships which are of particular benefit to businesses trading in more than one Local Authority area.
These are formal, legal partnerships between your business and a local authority. They are agreed with and held on a register held by Department for Business and Trade allowing enforcement officers across the country to see that they actively work with your regulator to ensure compliance and adopt best practice.
We'll work with you to ensure legal compliance in everything you do. You'll have a single-point of contact and can legally rely on the written assured advice you receive. We can also provide audit and training services; help to resolve disputes with your suppliers and customers or problems with other local authorities or ports of entry.
All regulators must discuss any proposed enforcement with us which we may block if it is inconsistent with our advice. The partnerships cover all aspects of trading standards and environmental health:
- trading standards (fair trading, product safety, metrology, animal health)
- food safety
- food labelling
- health and safety
- environmental protection (noise, odour, light pollution, and air quality)
Primary Authority Services are provided at the same rate as consultancy but do not include VAT.
Find out more about Primary Authority online or email: public.protection@york.gov.uk or telephone: 01904 551550 to speak to Paul Wetherall, Trading Standards Officer, Business Partnerships.