Lancashire Trading Standards chief retires after 42 years (From Lancashire Telegraph)
When news happens, text LT and your photos and videos to 80360. Or contact us by email or phone.
|
JOIN THE DEBATE BY ADDING YOUR COMMENTS ON THESE STORIES Registering to post comments on the Lancashire Telegraph website only takes a few seconds. Click here to go to the registration page. |
Lancashire Trading Standards chief retires after 42 years
1:27pm Thursday 29th July 2010 in
-
- By Tom Moseley » Reporter
LANCASHIRE residents are more at risk of being duped by fraudsters than ever before, according to the county’s trading standards chief who is retiring after 42 years.
Jim Potts has been Lancashire County Council’s ‘scambuster’ since 1986, leading campaigns to change the law and warning people about everything from fake Viagra to dodgy builders.
The 60-year-old, who lives in Chorley, tomorrow calls time on his trading standards career.
He has led the fight against foot and mouth disease; be threatened by a notorious Birmingham criminal with a gun; and chased crooks who scammed a pensioner out of £80,000 life savings.
Despite his best efforts, Mr Potts said the threat from online crooks now made scams even more of a danger for citizens.
He said: “The internet has opened up a whole new world of criminality, like counterfeit goods and unsafe medical treatments.
“Lancashire is now open to the world for all these things and it’s worse than ever before.”
His early work at Crewe council - the smallest in the country at the time - in the late 1960s mainly involved weights and measures, and also saw him break up fist fights between traders at the town’s market.
Now Mr Potts said he would like to see tougher controls on doorstep salesman, who often target elderly and vulnerable people, and bogus offers of lottery winnings and multimillion pound inheritances.
He said the county’s trading service was now in the ‘premier league’ on a national level, dealing with 40,000 new consumer problems each year and regulating more than 30,000 businesses.
Alongside his council work, Mr Potts was the first trading standards officer to appear on the Watchdog programme and he was the regular consumer expert on the BBC's Gloria Hunniford programme.
He also regularly hosted phone-ins on Radio Lancashire.
His achievements at Lancashire include campaigning for a change in the law on the safety of watersports and the banning of dangerous and nuisance fireworks.
And he even handled complaints that local football matches were of such a poor standard they could not be described as ‘entertainment’.
He added: “I've been incredibly lucky to have led on so many interesting investigations.
"I am sad to be going, but will be keeping my eyes out for scams and will always be vigilant.”
Jo Turton, the council’s executive director for the environment, paid tribute to her colleague, saying he would ‘leave a huge legacy in Lancashire’.
Mr Potts will be replaced by Paul Noone, who has been promoted from deputy.
Comments(3)
Chris P Bacon
says...
8:07am Fri 30 Jul 10
pez63 wrote:I've got a good idea; feather your nest, make hay while the sun shines or whinge and whine because someone else had the nous how to do this and you....didn't. If you're too gormless to know how to provide your own pension or dim enough to expect someone else to do it for you, then yes, work 'till you drop. You know, in this life, you get what you settle for.
Retirement at 60!Rest of the country have just been told we must work until we drop dead if we have no pension.
Kevin, Colne
says...
3:00pm Fri 30 Jul 10
ChrisP you make a fair point about making pension provision but I do think that one should recognise that there exists a significant number of people who entered into private-pension arrangements only to see these turn to dust.
Public sector provision too is not going to be anything like as good as it was.
The story of the withering of pensions is a complex one. Aside from the fact that people are living longer I think there are four other reasons of significance that have exacerbated the current crisis: the Conservatives limited the amount of suprlus that schemes could have, Labour scrapped the Advance Corporation Tax Credit, investment returns are said to have been poor and investment managers have levied charges that are simply outrageous for the sub-standard service that they provide.
It seems to me that the elites are using the issue of longevity to hide their own role in this unfolding catastrophe and the media are doing little to expose this.
In the political field short-sighted considerations drove national policy, as usual. In the financial field, the providers continued to amass lavish returns to themselves while the policy-holders are now left with the crumbs from the Master's table.
When mainstream financial institutions make the claim that investment returns are poor they are admitting to the fact that they are incompetent.
The test of financial money managers is not their performance when markets - asset prices and income streams - are booming, but how well they perform when returns are low.
What we are living through now has been called by some 'The Great Correction' and with it comes 'The Great Unravelling'.
More Rossendale stories
- Waterfoot dad died from a cocktail of drugs, inquest heard
- Stacksteads residents' group call for Rossendale tip to be restored to its natural habitat
- Jake Berry backs campaign for Rawtenstall to become Portas town
- Dog rescued from Rossendale embankment
- MASH scheme to slash cash by tackling East Lancashire problem families
- Two car collision causes tailbacks near Rising Bridge
- Darwen false claim knife attack woman found safe
- Haslingden man who groomed young girl on Facebook jailed
- Demolition work on Rawtenstall's Valley Centre set to start
- Rossendale fashion designer th-inks up t-shirt business
RETIREMENT: Jim Potts
Most popular
Local Information
Enter your postcode, town or place name
pez63 says...
11:50pm Thu 29 Jul 10