Trading Standards Officer

As a Trading Standards Officer, you will work in a multi-disciplinary team dealing with specialist areas within trading standards, such as fair trade, animal health, product safety or metrology. You will ensure a fair and legal trading environment is maintained by advising trade, industry and consumers on trading standards law and enforcing legislation through legal sanctions. What you will be doing:

• Whilst there is a focus on fair trading, you will deliver the full range of trading standards activities, to include enforcement action, complex investigations and partnership working.
• Initiating investigations into offences, you will recommend potential courses of action to your team leader and produce draft prosecution reports as required.
• It will be your responsibility to collect required evidence, using powers of seizure if necessary, and will formally interview suspected offenders
• You will compile reports within required time limits and within the rules of evidence.
• Offering advice to consumers and businesses on relevant legislation and market activities, you will ensure that legislation is complied with.
• You may be asked to provide evidence in court on the result of investigations to ensure that legislation delegated to the department is properly enforced.
  
  You must have a full relevant Trading Standards enforcement qualification, such as DCats, Level 6 Trading Standards Practitioner Apprenticeship, or equivalent, and have experience of working within a relevant enforcement or legal environment.
• We require you to have knowledge of relevant trading standards legislation, with the ability to make decisions based on compliance, using your initiative to deliver constraints.
• You will be a self-motivated, committed and determined professional, able to prioritise, plan, monitor and evaluate work and cases.
• It is key that you have the ability to work accurately under pressure, with good verbal and communication skills and able to meet deadlines.
What you need to know:
• You will be required to complete a non-police personnel vetting - level 2 abbreviated.
• The nature of the duties of this role will require you to travel, therefore, you must have a full, current valid driving licence and access to a vehicle.
  
  Interviews to be held on the 24th June 2026 How a career at South Gloucestershire Council is different:
• We know our team work best when they have balance in their lives and we offer genuine flexibility to help them achieve that work/life balance.
• We value our staff as individuals, investing in their careers and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our training and development offer, which helps make the greatest long-term difference in work.
• As part of our benefits package you will receive generous annual leave (pro rata), employee wellbeing support and you will have access to a range of staff discounts, including eye tests, travel, shopping and leisure activities.
• We recognise that our diverse team of skilled and dedicated people make us a great place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and ensure that individuals are selected, promoted and developed on the basis of their merits and abilities.
Our teams at South Gloucestershire Council are making a real difference to the lives of people who live, work and learn here.
• We're providing essential services across our internal network to ensure we can fully support our community.
• We're positive and forward thinking, always looking for new and innovative ways of working work and we're ambitious about the future.
We've achieved a great deal, but we need talented and dedicated people to ensure we continue to make a difference. We're making a difference, be part of it! To view the full job description, please click this link