Starting a business is exciting, but staying compliant with UK regulations is key to long-term success. Our 10 Essential Steps to Building a Compliant, Growth-Focused Business offers a high-level guide to help you focus on the most critical areas—like protecting your intellectual property, ensuring product compliance, and staying GDPR-compliant. Compliance isn’t just about avoiding penalties; it’s about building trust, protecting your brand, and setting the stage for sustainable growth.

As a business owner, you may be taking steps to help protect the planet, but it's important to ensure that your eco-friendly claims are accurate and not misleading. Making eco-claims can be a powerful marketing tool, but you need to be honest, specific, and complete.

What is intellectual property?

What is a consumer contract? A consumer contract legally binds a business to a consumer by way of an agreement that’s consolidated in writing or verbally in relation to a product or service - which could be virtual (for example, a subscription to a streaming platform) or physical (i.e. a laptop bought in-store).

As a small business, selling fireworks over the next few months can generate some much-needed income, profit margins on fireworks are reputationally high, but it’s vital you do it in a way that is legal and without risks.

Trading Standards and Consumer Law are complex topics unless you’re a specialist. There’s also a stigma attached to these two terms which might remind people of horror stories they’ve seen on shows like Watchdog or Rogue Traders.

In reality, trading standards officers aren’t ‘out to get you’ as a business, and the terrifying tales you’ve heard about them aren’t, therefore, representative of how this aspect of the law works…

What springs to your mind when you think of the term Compliance, or Regulation? And what image do you have of a Compliance Officer or someone who works as a regulator?

Having worked as a trading standards officer in several local authorities over the last 20 years I've experienced countless instances where the mere sight of myself and my colleagues would make people stiffen up, panic and the colour drain from their face as I introduced myself.