Trading standards - advice and support

The Trading Standards service aims to provide advice and support to residents and businesses in West Lothian as follows:

• To provide preventative advice to consumers with the objective of enabling them to protect themselves more effectively when purchasing goods and services.
• To provide advice and assistance to consumers with the objective of enabling them to exercise their legal rights more effectively and obtain satisfactory redress following the supply of faulty goods or substandard services.
• To provide businesses with technical and legal advice with the objective of enabling them to trade fairly and in compliance with civil and criminal legal obligations.

By enabling consumers and businesses in these ways, the Service aims to create more informed, confident, demanding consumers with the objective of encouraging businesses operating in a competitive environment to work towards continuous improvement of their trading practices.

To use information gathered from consumers to target our criminal enforcement activities and to detect situations where civil enforcement powers may be used to prevent businesses from persisting in a course of conduct that is detrimental to consumers in general.

Further details are contained in our Consumer Advice, Consumer Education And
Business Advice Policy - see attached downloadable document.