Agenda item

Steve Rock (Head of Trading Standards) and Clive Phillips (Trading Standards, Complex Investigations Manager) were in attendance for this item

1.       Mr Hill, OBE (Cabinet Member for Community and Regulatory Services) introduced the report that provided an update on the prevalence and impact of Doorstep Crime in Kent and the actions to be taken by Trading Standards to improve information sharing and data intelligence. Mr Hill informed the Committee that since publication of the report, Kent Trading Standards had secured funding for an Intelligence Analyst for an initial period of twelve months.

2.       Mr Phillips presented a short nationally funded film which highlighted the significant impact of Doorstep Crime (on vulnerable adults) and said that the preliminary analysis of data related to Doorstep Crime in Kent had revealed the recurrent inconsistencies in crime recording and therefore the data captured to date could not be relied on. Mr Phillips informed the Committee that primary role of the Intelligence Analyst would be to work with District and Borough Councils as well as other enforcement agencies to instigate and implement the sharing of victim data to ensure consistent information between all partner agencies and create an agreed single reporting method that could be accessed by all partner agencies.

3.    The officers responded to comments and questions as follows:

(a)  Mr Phillips assured the Committee that the units in the Public Protection group which included Wardens, Trading Standards, Intelligence and Community Safety, all worked very closely with Kent Police in pursuing criminals, safeguarding victims and raising public awareness through a number of educational campaigns. Mr Phillips said that all victims of Doorstep Crime in Kent had access to free telephone advice from the Citizens Advice Consumer Service and those who were deemed to be particularly vulnerable would be visited by a Warden, a Police Prevent Officer or Victim of Safeguarding Officer. He said that Wardens had attended a number of community groups to raise awareness of Doorstep Crime where the film had been well received.

(b)  In response to queries regarding the need for a single point of contact to report Doorstep Crime in Kent, Mr Phillips said that the reason why the emergency number ‘999’ was referred to in the film was because if a crime were in progress, the Police could be deployed immediately to respond and arrest criminals on the scene, however, Trading Standards did not have the capacity or same legal powers to act on criminal activity. Trading Standards was working with the charitable sector, specifically Age UK, to look at how they could utilise their befriending services. The role of the Victim Safeguarding Officer also involved working with the charitable sectors to identify what services operated within specific areas and ensure that vulnerable victims had the correct support from those service once the Safeguarding Officer’s role had ended. Supplementary to this, Mr Rock informed the Committee that all calls received by the Citizens Advice Consumer Service number were filtered through to Trading Services and then onto the Protection Intelligence Team who were then responsible for assessing the risk of the calls coming through. The Protection Intelligence Team would then produce an intelligence package that would be sent to the Complex Investigations Unit in Trading Standards and the case would be assigned. Mr Rock said that by using a single point of contact, it would allow the Trading Services team and other partner agencies to access shared data and make informed decisions as to where resources would be most effectively deployed.

(c)   Mr Phillips informed Members that there was a dedicated fraud team in Kent Police and that Kent and Essex Police were promoting prevention of fraud through educational programmes. Trading Standards did attend regular meetings with partner agencies to address the inherent challenges of dealing with reports of fraud such as capacity to respond.

(d)  In response to other forms of fraud, such as online abuse and telephone scams and whether the new data would be used to build a more detailed picture of other victims of fraud beyond Doorstep Crime, Mr Phillips said that out of the 212 visits carried out by the Safeguarding Officers, a survey revealed that a majority of victims did not have access to the internet or telephone and fell within the category of socially isolated victims. Mr Phillips acknowledged that fraud covered a range of criminal activities, however, the report presented to the Growth, Economic Development and Communities Cabinet Committee was primarily focused on Doorstep Crime and vulnerable adults. Over the next 12 months, the role of the Intelligence Analyst would be to produce a system whereby every type of scam could be recorded.

(e)  Mr Rock informed the Committee that scams were a national issue, however work was being done in conjunction with the National Trading Standards Scam Team to identify all forms of fraud within the country and a scams conference was due to be held in Kent on 1 October 2019.

(f)    Mr Phillips confirmed that Trading Standards worked with HMRC and on one of the reported prosecutions worked closely with the National Crime Agency (NCA) to recoup money through tax invasion and said that all intelligence was shared with HM Revenue & Customs and Department for Work & Pensions as criminals often abused the benefit system. The in-house financial investigators recovered £200,000 from criminals in compensation. If there were no victims of fraud, the compensation money would be reinvested into the Financial Investigations team along with any fines recovered from criminal assets. Mr Phillips said that the £200,000 was the amount of assets available to the victims, the entire amount of money lost by the victim was not always recoverable. Where criminals had properties, Trading Standards could restrain the property so that it could not be sold until   compensation was paid back to the victim.

(g)  With regard to telephone scams, Mr Phillips recommended that residents used the True Call Blockers which was a national system that blocked scam calls and monitored phone lines. Kent County Council had invested in a number of call blockers with the proceeds of crime money and have placed these in the homes of vulnerable people. Mr Phillips said that there were a number of telecommunication companies that offered blocker services, however, the key to tackling fraud was through preventative actions and ensuring that members of the public were receiving the regular communication updates published by Trading Standards.

(h)  Mr Phillips agreed to circulate the full-length film to the Committee.

4.    RESOLVED that the report be noted.