Medway Trading Standards

Medway Trading Standards aims to make Kent a better place to live and do business. We enforce legislation to protect consumers and make sure that businesses can compete fairly. We provide support and advice for businesses. We are also responsible for:

- taking action against businesses that deliberately or persistently break the law, particularly those engaged in door to door sales.
- restricting

access for children and young people to harmful age-restricted goods.
- maintaining food standards and helping people to make informed, healthy choices.
- controlling farm animal welfare and disease. The role of trading standards is to ensure that businesses compete in a fair and safe manner, ensuring benefits for both consumers and legitimate traders. Individual consumers would find it hard to influence businesses about their conduct. For this reason, consumer protection legislation makes sure goods and services are correctly described and any prices quoted are not misleading. The council enforces the law in the following main areas:

- fair trading,
- safety of consumer goods,
- product counterfeiting,
- food standards and composition,
- underage sales,
- animal health and welfare (farm animals only),
- standards and composition of animal feeds,
- consumer credit,
- doorstep crime,
- petrol and explosives storage,
- weights and measures (including certification of public weighbridge operators).