Examination of Witness by the Committee
(Questions 78-79)
MR GAVIN WILDERS
16 JUNE 2004
78. CHAIRMAN: I think you have outlined the
problem very well for us. My first question was going to be, what
is the problem? It is a series of problems. It is trading standards,
health hazards, all sorts of things. Could I ask first of all
why now?
(Mr Wilders) We
were vested in 1998, so that is six years ago. We traditionally
have tried to look at enforcement through routes such as trading
standards, environmental health departments where you have highly
qualified officers going out and doing a large range of work.
The reality is that having these highly qualified officers trying
to carry out this level of enforcement is not a good use of the
officers' time. We gave it to the Warden Service as a more generic
duty for them to perform. What we found, because they are able
to give the time to going out and doing the monitoring and trying
the enforcement, was that we are getting an increase in the number
of traders but we are not getting an increase in the number of
effective outcomes.
79. CHAIRMAN: So the answer is it is
getting worse?
(Mr Wilders) Yes.
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