London-based Derek Allen, LACORS executive director, reports on a recent trip to see the work of trading standards teams in action.

Arriving at Northallerton’s small railway station in icy winds and darkened skies, against a backdrop of the snowy, remote hills of the North Yorkshire moors, it reminded me, if I needed it, that there is a very different world beyond the sometimes-rarefied air of London’s Smith Square and its environs.

Graham Venn, North Yorkshire CC’s assistant director in charge of trading standards and planning services, had made his senior management team available to let me know what life is like on the frontline for his regulatory services in a very large – more than 3,000 square miles – mainly rural and quite remote county location.

Read the rest of the story which featured in the MJ, Thursday 11 February 2010.