Trading Standards - Consumer advice
Citizens Advice consumer service
The Citizens Advice consumer service provides free, confidential and impartial advice on consumer issues. Visit www.adviceguide.org.uk or call the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 08454 04 05 06. They can advise on issues such as faulty goods, poor workmanship and substandard services. You should also contact them to report dishonest trading and scams. Citizens Advice works in partnership with Local Authority Trading Standards Services by providing first level advice and information on a wide range of consumer problems. Complaints requiring further investigation or assistance are referred to Trading Standards or other advice services.
Calls to the Citizens Advice consumer service 0845 number are charged at no more than five pence per minute from a BT landline (plus any phone access charges) and may be free depending on your call plan. Call charges from other landline providers or mobile phones may vary. Please check the rate with your phone service provider.
Trustmark
The TrustMark scheme allows you to find a tradesman to carry out repair, maintenance or improvement work on your property who has been approved under the TrustMark standard. TrustMark is the Government backed approved trader scheme designed to help ensure that traders are reputable and carry out good quality work. Businesses who become members of the scheme undertake to operate their business in a legal, honest and fair way and are vetted and monitored by a Trustmark Scheme Operator.
Find a Trustmark approved trader
Ringmaster Community Messaging
This system is used to transmit messages to members of the public, businesses and other interested groups who have agreed to register with the scheme. Messages can be received via a pre-recorded telephone message, fax, email or text message. There is no charge for this service.
The system has helped greatly to improve communications between the Police, Trading Standards, Advice Agencies, the Business Community and the General Public. Details of crime, suspicious incidents and current scams will be fed into the system to create a Ringmaster message which will then be delivered to the most appropriate recipients via their chosen method of message delivery (phone, fax, email or text). We must stress that the Ringmaster System CANNOT be used as a vehicle to report crime. All incidents of crime must be reported in the normal way using either the non-emergency 101 number, or in an emergency 999.
Sign up to the Ringmaster system (via the Powys Ringmaster website).
Contact us
Details of how to contact us are available from our Contact Us page.
