Council trading standards officers should receive additional funding from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to help combat rogue traders behind consumer scams netting £7bn each year, MPs have concluded.
Margaret Hodge, chair of the public accounts committee, said town hall trading standards units had ‘not kept pace with the rise of mass market scams, often perpetrated online' after they were originally set up to counter single instances of trader fraud, such as selling short measures.
