Trading Standards Service Advice Plan 2008-9

Current and Future Advice Provision

Background

County Durham is situated in the north east of England, between the wild beauty of the northern Pennine hills and the magnesium limestone and boulder clay cliffs of the North Sea coast. It covers an area of 223,300 hectares and has enjoyed the wealth of coal, iron and lead mining associated with steel manufacture, heavy engineering and coal exportation. New technology businesses, general fabrication and component manufacture has now superseded most of the ‘old’ industries.

In less populated and rural areas there are over 2,500 farms growing cereals and potatoes and rearing cattle, sheep and pigs. The County’s economy continues to grow and diversify, but still has some way to go before it compares with the national infrastructure of industry and commerce.

The population of County Durham in 2001 was recorded by the Census as 493,470. It is expected to hold at this level over the next ten years and then rise slightly in the following 10 years. In line with national trends, the number of older people in our communities is expected to increase substantially. The most significant changes will be in the retirement age groups with those aged 60 plus anticipated to increase by 27% and those aged 85 by some 59%. People from ethnic minority backgrounds now represent 2% of the population.

Most of our people live in central and eastern parts. There has been an outward migration over the last twenty years, with a disproportionate loss of younger economically active people. This trend has slowed in recent years and overall numbers are expected to remain relatively stable over the next ten years.

The Government’s Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) was adopted in 2000 to provide a standard approach to identifying national standards of deprivation. The index shows that nearly 32% of the County’s residents live in wards ranked amongst the worst 10% in England. The main concentrations of deprived areas cover most of East Durham and two crescent shaped areas in the northwest and southwest of the County.

The Service has made contact with the Polish and Chinese communities’ representatives within the County to advise them of the Consumer Direct North East Service, and to promote access to consumer advice.

Aims of the Service

The provision of the Consumer Advice Service contributes to Durham County Council's Mission Statement "... to make County Durham the best place to live, work and bring up a family".

In particular, the Consumer Advice Service helps to deliver the Authority's priority outcome, namely safeguarding economic well being of residents. All the aims and objectives of The Trading Standards Service, which includes Consumer Advice, are contained in the Service Delivery Plan, which also demonstrates contributions to the high level outcomes of Durham County Council.

Current Provision

Service Delivery

Our officers are based at two centres within the County, namely Durham and Bishop Auckland and respond to all personal callers, telephone, internet and written complaints and enquiries. In addition, home visits can be arranged for needy clients. The main source of advice work stems from notifications we receive from Consumer Direct North East as detailed below.

Since March 2006, first contact consumer advice has been provided across the North East Region by a telephone helpline, Consumer Direct North East, a regional call centre, based in Redcar. This is a Government backed initiative, funded by the Office of Fair Trading and delivered in the region by a partnership of the twelve North East Region’s Trading Standards Services.

Callers use a single national local call rate number which diverts calls to the callers’ regional Consumer Direct centre. A system is in place to affect this whether calling from a fixed landline or a mobile phone.

Where the enquiry relates to a complex matter, or the initial advice provided by Consumer Direct North East fails to resolve the problem, CDNE refers the enquiry to trained advisers within our Service. This second tier advice assists consumers to progress their complaint, and where appropriate, our officers negotiate with the trader concerned. Where these negotiations fail, staff can help consumers with the small claims procedures in the County Court. Our officers will also identify any breaches of criminal law that require further investigation by our enforcement staff.

Opening hours are: -

• Monday to Thursday 8.30am – 5.00pm
• Friday 8.30am – 4.30pm

Out of hours telephone calls are captured by a mailbox

Staffing

The Service provides a Senior Fair Trading Officer (Advice) and a further five full time Fair Trading (Advice) Officer posts to deliver case work in the category of consumer and general contract law. These officers work very closely with an additional Fair Trading Officer, whose task it is to identify rogue traders and reduce their complaint levels, by intervention. The central database of the Consumer Direct system is also interrogated to pick up on trends of complaints and inform consumer education and publicity initiatives.

All of our officers undertake general help and casework depending upon the needs of the client and have met the requirement referred to in D 5.1 in the CLS Quality Mark documentation.

We have an equal opportunities policy that is designed to prevent discrimination both in the recruitment and selection of staff and in the provision of service to clients. All staff within the Service have undertaken training on diversity issues, including in November 2007, training on learning disabilities and mental heath problems in order to improve service delivery.

The provision of these services is managed on a day-to-day basis by a Senior Fair Trading Officer (Advice).

Client Groups

• Durham County Council's Consumer Advice Service is provided to:
• Consumers and traders based in County Durham, regardless of place of transaction,
• Employees of the Authority regardless of residence or location
• All personal callers.

Durham County Council Trading Standards Service is part of a regional Trading Standards Grouping, North East Trading Standards Association (NETSA), which holds regular meetings where CDNE are represented.

All relevant staff are trained and provided with reference material to ensure that clients needing other agencies' assistance are effectively signposted or referred. In the main initial signposting role is provided by CDNE.

We are committed to creating, maintaining and promoting a just society that gives everyone an equal chance to learn, work and live, free from discrimination and prejudice. Therefore, to ensure that our Service is accessible to all members of our target groups, contact details of CDNE are publicised in Countywide, telephone directories, library leaflets, on the internet and on posters distributed to various community contact points. We are currently working with a number of hard to reach groups, to improve awareness and to improve the uptake of our services by some of our minority communities. Since 2004, much work has been undertaken to address diversity issues and impact assess service policies, procedures and methods of service delivery. This has included staff training and improvements to many leaflets and other documents used by the service.

Advice Service Funding

Consumer Advice is currently resourced solely by Durham County Council who provides accommodation, computer terminals and trained personnel at both sites. In addition, the necessary management, administration and information materials are provided.

Budgets are agreed on an annual cycle commencing in August and concluding in February of each year. Financial management and control is exercised by the Service Management Team in accordance with Standing Orders, Financial Regulations and Delegated Responsibilities, defined by the County Council. It is usual for the Service Management Team to compare planned expenditure, with actual expenditure, for a variety of budget headings, on a monthly basis.

Collectively, the skills of the Service personnel and the resources allocated by the Authority ensure that the Service effectively delivers its stated aims. Any resource shortfall identified during the course of any given financial year is addressed during the relevant budget cycle.

Future Provision

Community Consumer Advice Needs

The figures below reflect the number of people contacting our service and Consumer Direct North East, for advice and assistance, over the course of the last 5 years.

The statistics for the past five years indicate a fairly static annual demand from County Durham consumers. Further work is planned in partnership with Consumer Direct North East, to raise public awareness of how to obtain consumer advice.

During the period 1 April 2007 to 31 December 2007, the service assisted consumers with purchases and contracts totalling over £ 4.5 million.

The most frequent areas of consumer complaint, during 2006 – 2007 were as follows:

• Home maintenance repairs and improvements
• Upholstered furniture
• Second hand motor vehicles
• Food and Drink
• Mobile phones and telecommunications services
• Radio, TV and other audiovisual equipment
• Pets and veterinarian services.
• Double glazing products and installation
• Other professional services
• Betting, gaming and prize draws.

We do not expect a radical shift in areas of consumer complaints, which would lead to resource and training implications for the coming year.

Since April 2002, our service has obtained feedback on a monthly basis to monitor quality of advice provision. The Client Feedback Survey is distributed to users of our Service where general help or casework had been provided. For the first three quarters of the year 2007 – 2008, results were encouraging with the majority of respondees being either very satisfied 76% (65.5%)* or fairly satisfied 20% (25%)* This represents an overall improvement on the previous year with 96% of clients being either very or fairly satisfied, compared with 90.5% for 2006-2007*. The expressed level of dissatisfaction with the service has also fallen from 8.6% to 4% (2 responses). These responses indicating dissatisfaction with our service, usually relate to instances where the matter was not resolved in favour of the consumer and therefore may not represent a true assessment of the service received. Where this feedback is provided anonymously it is not always possible to investigate the reasons for dissatisfaction being expressed.

There have been four Corporate Complaints against the Service during the period January to December 2007. The Service has received 43 letters of thanks acknowledging the assistance provided by officers.

Staff training in the year under review has been provided in a number of areas, including:

Physical disability awareness, learning disabilities and mental health awareness including the impact of the Mental Capacity Act, County Court procedures, and the draft Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, which come into force in May 2008.

The Community Legal Service Quality Mark full status was awarded to the Service in December 2001. A further external audit, undertaken during December 2003, resulted in our accreditation being retained. The Service is accredited in the Consumer Category for General Help and Casework. Ongoing training and a programme of internal audits, seek to ensure that the Service retains this quality mark. A further external audit was carried out in July 2005, maintaining recognition of our service with this quality standard.

The Service has access to a language translation facility. This is a telephone based interpreter service to assist consumers who do not speak English as their first language. An induction loop is available to assist clients with hearing difficulties. Further work is planned to explore the possibilities of accessing personal translators for home visits, staff training on cultural issues. We recognise the need to provide leaflets and posters in non-English languages and the need to make our service more accessible to ethnic minority groups, by raising awareness within diverse communities. A great deal of work has been made to reach the local Polish and Chinese communities Our Service will continue to work with corporate initiatives to ensure equal opportunities are afforded to our clients.