Trading Standards Inspection, Testing and Enforcement

Inspection

Trading Standards ensures that traders within Orkney comply with a range of legislation relating to issues such as:

• Weights and measures.
• The accuracy of pricing.
• The safety of goods and services on sale.
• Underage sales.
• Trade descriptions.
• Feeding stuffs - farms.

In order to check compliance with this legislation, we carry out periodic inspections on all premises, and advise traders if necessary on how to comply with the law.

Testing

Trading Standards initiates projects to carry out test purchases and sampling of products in order to verify authenticity, safety, and conformity with description. Testing may also be carried out in response to a consumer complaint. Products or samples are usually sent for analysis at the Analytical and Scientific Services laboratory in Edinburgh City Council, or in the case of suspected counterfeit goods, to the manufacturer of the brand.

Enforcement

Trading Standards has statutory duties to enforce approximately 30 Acts of Parliament and several hundred statutory instruments made thereunder.

We are committed to working with traders to ensure compliance with legislation, but in rare cases preparing a report to the Procurator Fiscal may be necessary. The Procurator Fiscal will decide whether to commence prosecution proceedings based on the evidence available, the seriousness of the breach and the extent to which it would be in the public interest to prosecute.

Trading Standards is empowered by legislation to seize goods and documents if there is reason to believe that an offence has been committed.