Prosecutions
We work closely with local businesses to ensure that they understand and comply with their legal obligations.
The vast majority of businesses are responsible and provide their customers with goods and services that satisfy legal requirements.
However, prosecutions can result in cases where businesses fall short of the required standards - either by deliberate actions or carelessness.
We have adopted the Government's Enforcement Concordat - please use the link in the related links section to download it - which sets out principles of good practice in regulatory and enforcement activity and we do not take the decision to prosecute lightly.
See the Related documents section below to view our Compliance Policy, which sets out the criteria we use when considering legal action.
Before any criminal proceedings can be taken we are obliged to comply with two important tests:
- A prosecution must be in the public interest.
- There must be sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of prosecution.
Please see the related documents section for details of previous prosecutions.
Please bear in mind that some offences may not come to our attention for some time and could have been committed a long time ago.
The business may now have amended its practices, be trading legally and present no problem to consumers.
Related documents
The following documents are in Portable Document Format (PDF). You can download software to view PDF documents for free from the Adobe website (opens in a new window)
- Compliance policy (157KB)
- Completed Prosecutions - November 2011 to September 2012 (21KB)
- Completed Prosecutions - June 2011 to October 2011 (9KB)
- Completed Prosecutions - December 2010 to May 2011 (10KB)
- Completed Prosecutions - April 2010 to November 2010 (16KB)
- Completed Prosecutions - January 2010 to February 2010 (8KB)