Gearing up for a General Election, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) and Tourism Alliance have published their Manifestos with asks for the next Government.
CTSI wants to better protect consumers, and to ensure that it has the right levels of regulation in the UK to support business innovation and growth.
The trading standards body is calling for stronger protection at ports/borders, school lessons in consumer rights and licensing of tradesmen, among other measures.
CTSI is also seeking an investment of £100M in Trading Standards, which it claims would be recouped more than ten-fold by reducing the detriment consumers face, increasing the tax take by clamping down on counterfeit products and averting future product or food safety crises that cost millions.
CTSI Manifesto 2024 (tradingstandards.uk)
The manifesto for the Tourism Alliance – the umbrella body for more than 75 UK tourism organisations – addresses several shortcomings in UK government policy with a 20-point plan, grouped under four themes:
- Making Travel Easier
- Allowing Tourism Businesses to Thrive
- Supporting Destinations, Places and Communities
- The UK in a Competitive Tourism Marketplace.
Tourism is a large and vital component of the UK economy. After financial services, it is the most important generator of export revenue in the service sector. Pre-Covid, the tourism industry employed 3.4 million people in over 300,000 businesses spread across every constituency in the UK and it generated over £150 billion every year for local communities.
