The small team of dedicated officers work alongside the 11 trading standards services in the Yorkshire and Humber region as well as the police and other enforcement agencies.
The team has specialist Financial Investigators who use the court process to confiscate assets obtained from crime.
What we investigate
The National Trading Standards Regional Investigations team and eCrime team investigate all aspects of unfair and fraudulent trading practices used by rogue businesses. Examples of these include:
- traders carrying out shoddy and unnecessary property repairs.
- inappropriate pressure selling targeted older and vulnerable people
- online scams that are directed at consumers in a systematic way with widespread effect
What we do
The team is 'tasked' investigations by local trading standards services where the offending is occurring across local authority boundaries. More often than not however these illegal activities are affecting people nationwide. In tasking 'cross boundary' cases to the specialist team, local trading standards services can focus their resources to support legitimate businesses and issues affecting local residents.
As the team's work is supplied by other trading standards services, they do not routinely deal with complaints directly from the public however the team will occasionally contact people during the course of their investigations.
What you can do
If anyone has information about a scam, please contact the Citizens Advice consumer helpline or Trading Standards as soon as possible.