Council trading standards offices should receive additional funding from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to help combat rogue traders behind consumer scams netting £7bn annually, MPs have concluded.

Chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Margaret Hodge said town hall trading standards units - originally set up to counter single instances of trader fraud, such as selling short measures - have ‘not kept pace with the rise of mass market scams, often perpetrated online'.

‘The Department must ensure that there is funding and proper systems in place to escalate cases to the right enforcement body,' she added.

Local authorities spent the bulk of the £247m available for enforcing consumer law in 2009/10, according to a related National Audit Office report. The spending watchdog also found most trading standards services were under-resourced to deal with malpractice taking place across council boundaries after the BIS withdrew £8m previously allocated for tackling regional malpractice.

The study also found wide funding variations between authorities, with some areas having as few as two trading standards officers while others employ over a hundred.  These different levels of coverage have led to ‘enforcement deserts' in some places where councils fail to spend enough money to deliver an acceptable level of protection to consumers.