Trainee Trading Standards Officer
Job Summary
Advert Start Date:
27/03/2023
Advert End Date:
Closed for applications on 27/04/2023 23:59
Salary:
£24,496 - £27,852
Further Information
The post is across a number of sites in including our head office in Fletton Quays Peterborough, and an office based in South Cambourne, Cambridgeshire and an office base in Rutland. All of our office bases are available to officers when working in the area and which can also be used as a base once less support is needed. Agile and flexible working will also be a feature of this post and as such you will be able to work on the district operationally, from home and also from an office base to widen your knowledge and support training outcomes.
If you are looking for a rewarding public service career, where you can make a real difference, a career that will give you an ongoing interest and challenge, where no two days are likely to be the same? Then become a Trainee Trading Standards Officer to start your journey!
The Trading Standards team is looking to recruit a Trainee Trading Standards Officer to join its vibrant team, which delivers a service across Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, and Rutland.
Trading Standards has a very broad public protection remit, including:
o Food: ensuring the food we buy is safe and correctly labelled from the farm to the plate at home, in a restaurant or from a takeaway
o Animal feed: ensuring feed being fed to farmed animals is safe.
o Animal Health and Welfare: we have an animal protection role, upholding animal welfare standards on farms and small holdings, and ensuring disease prevention measures are in place to prevent another disease on the scale of Foot & Mouth disease in 2001 and more recently Avian Flu. .
o Petroleum Safety: upholding safety on petrol forecourts
o Explosives: regulating of the storage and sale of fireworks
o Weights and Measures: making sure weights and measures equipment used to sell goods is accurate, and quantities sold are not short measure.
o Fair Trading: ensuring consumers aren’t misled by inaccurate descriptions or information, subjected to prohibited trading practices, and consumer legal rights are upheld.
o Product Safety: ensuring people and property are not harmed by defective products.
o Primary authority work
o Sportsgrounds: regulating the safety of designated grounds and spectator stands
o Business Advice and Support: provision of a comprehensive business advice service.
Whilst the successful candidate will gain experience of every aspect of the Service as part of their training, ultimately, they will be joining either our Business Compliance Team or Consumer Protection team. This will involve work such as carrying out inspection work on a daily basis at business premises across a range of subject matters. These may include Food, Feed, Animal Health, Petroleum safety, Explosives and Product Safety, investigations, prosecutions, test purchase work and other trading standards matters as this is not an exhaustive list.
You will need to be able to build a rapport with a wide range of businesses to support them in their compliance during these visits and also be able to adjust your approach depending on the circumstances. However, where necessary, you will need to investigate more serious breaches and take appropriate action to tackle them, which could include putting the matter before the Courts.
As this role is about advising many types of business on their legal obligations, the successful applicant will need an eye for detail and to be able to study and interpret legislation in a way that is both practical and accurate. Our role is a technical one and a qualification is needed to be able to work in many of the fields we cover, so it will also be a requirement that the successful applicant completes the three-year professional qualification - the Trading Standards Practitioner Diploma. This will involve some commitment to study in their own time as well as study days provided by us as a council. Alongside supporting the qualification process, we will also provide a wealth of experience, mentoring and shadowing opportunities to enable learning to be applied in a practical way that builds confidence.
For the right candidate, Trading Standards offers a potential lifetime career option. Post qualification, we anticipate the successful candidate being able to move into a qualified officer role with opportunities for further progression and potential increase in salary as their knowledge and experience increases.
We appreciate many prospective applicants will be waiting for degree/A-level results and we are happy to accept candidates based on predicted grades in these circumstances.
Interviews will be held in April/May 23
For an informal discussion about the role please contact either Hilary Gilbert on 07920 160718 or Joanne Smith on 07776 457626.
We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire/Peterborough and want our workforce to reflect this diversity, which we believe is beneficial for our employees, the organisation and the communities we serve.
Please note
This job is closed for applications.