The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) has called for urgent government funding in Wednesday’s Budget to tackle serious and organised crime impacting Britain’s high streets and legitimate businesses.
The institiute said a recent member survey had identified organised criminality as the “number one threat”, with criminal ‘fronts’ undercutting law-abiding retailers and depriving the Treasury of vital tax receipts.
Serious and organised crime - such as businesses selling counterfeit products and illicit items - is “drastically adding” to workloads of local Trading Standards services and diverting attention and support for legitimate businesses, added CTSI.
It has called for additional funding, and has proposed a series of policy measures for the government to address issues related to organised crime, including:
- Providing long-term, sustainable funding for proven multi-agency initiatives to disrupt serious organised crime, such as Operation Machinize
- Strengthening enforcement powers, such as permitting permanent closure of persistently offending shops
- Improving intelligence sharing between partner agencies
Serious and organised crime is a “persistent blight” on Britain’s high streets and communities up and down the country, according to John Herriman, chief executive at CTSI.
“Given the government’s commitment to economic growth, we are concerned that the growth in organised criminality is undercutting law abiding business and depriving the Exchequer of much needed funding to support public services,” he said.
Enforcement agencies involved in distrupting organised criminality - such as the police, National Crime Agency and Trading Standards - need “greater resources” to ”address the threat posed to UK consumers and law-abiding businesses”, added Herriman.
“A recent spotlight on the issue of shop ’fronts’ has highlighted the scale of organised criminality on UK high streets, involving complex networks of distribution, storage, and retail of illegal goods in high street shops.
”Such ’fronts’ are becoming an increasing issue for the UK’s Trading Standards workforce and are a scourge of the high street, sometimes used as a front for serious and organised crime activities such as Modern Day Slavery and human trafficking, distribution of weapons and drugs, money laundering, and the sale and supply of illegal and unsafe products such as counterfeit goods and illegal vapes and tobacco, to fund criminal lifestyles and other criminal activities.”
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