Business Advice

Your business advice options

We know regulation can sometimes feel overwhelming so we have provided some quick and easy guides to various business areas on the right of this page.

Our Trading Standards team has extensive experience of advising a variety of businesses from start-up businesses to large international corporations. We provide three options in relation to business advice, basic advice (by way of signposting and leaflets), personalised advice or Primary Authority.

Basic advice

The pages on the right provide simple advice and guidance for businesses.

Personalised advice

• Face-to-face meetings to talk you through consumer protection legislation
• Information on changes to legislation which might affect your business
• Start-up advice for new businesses and
• Advice relating to your printed and online marketing materials and/or product labelling.

This is a chargeable service and an hourly fee of £67 is charged for this service.

Primary Authority

If your business operates across several local authorities you can enter into a Primary Authority Partnership (PAP) with the Public Protection Partnership.

This bespoke partnership will help you manage relationships with local authorities across the UK, simplify regulatory processes and reduce the cost of compliance. A PAP can help reduce the risk to your business and ultimately ensure it is both profitable and productive.

Trading Standards can work with you to develop a national inspection plan. We can also detail advice and issue guidelines to other councils regarding the way your business should be dealt with a view to minimising unnecessary checks.

The agreement will be registered with central government (Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy). As part of this service we will provide all the previously listed support, plus the following:

• named contact for the business
• Primary Authority advice and liaison with other authorities
• a national inspection plan if required
• auditing of your procedures and processes (as required)
• single point of contact for regulators and
• site visits both locally and nationally (if required).

There are many advantages of a PAP including:

• financial savings
• reduced compliance costs
• reduced risk
• improved standards
• fewer inspections, information requests and checks on your business nationally and
• a guaranteed level of service and support including easy access to your regulator.

Partnerships are individual to your business and therefore the charges will vary. The cost includes a retainer with a certain amount of inclusive time. Should you exceed this inclusive amount of time there would be additional fees charged on an hourly basis.

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