30 Nov 2009 – BIS 2009 policy
PRESS RELEASE: NO EMBARGO
BIS consultation URN09/1074 Pedlary
Policy proposals to add 4000 Pedlars to the live register of unemployed
Under Parliamentary Statute Local Authority Static Trading regulations do not apply to traders who are pedestrian.
This category of traders are Certified under the Pedlars Act and are free to trade any place in the United Kingdom.
Anyone above age 17 can for £12.50 apply for a Certificate to trade anywhere as a pedlar.
Given that the UK has 65 million citizens 48 million are affected.
A Certificate allows the activities of pedlary regulated by the Pedlars Act.
Another category of traders are Licensed to occupy a fixed location regulated by the LGMPA and has nothing to do with pedlary.
Both Certificate and Licence are akin to an identity card that has information about the trader but there is a difference.
The holder of a Certificate is answerable to the Crown and the Licence holder to the Local Authority.
The word pedlar originates in the word “pedus – the foot” hence a Statute for pedestrian traders – the Pedlars Act.
The 1982 remit for Local Authorities covers street furniture, static pitches, circulation patterns, lighting & garbage removal but that remit does not extend to regulating pedestrians in a street – whether shopping pedestrians or trading pedestrians.
In 1966 Hawkers Licences were abolished and until 1982 hawkers were unregulated and crowded the streets.
The 1982 LGMPA provided regulation and Licensing of static hawkers.
But some hawkers then sought the same rights as pedlars by obtaining a Certificate and they continued to operate.
[By definition a pedlar and a hawker are the same but hawkers can use a means to carrying their goods eg trolley]
Court cases against static hawkers began in 1988 because some were not moving [travel and trade] but acting as Licensed traders [travel to trade].
By 1997 a dubious aphorism originated in Case Law stating that a pedlar ‘trades as he travels’ and a point of public importance was raised by the Justices under an Order 57 to define the distinction between a “pedlar” and a “street trader” – the issue remains outstanding.
Sharpe Pritchard Solicitors instructed in the case but failed to follow up the Order 57 by taking a different course of action.
The very next year 1998 Sharpe Pritchard misled Parliament stating that “genuine pedlars would not be affected” by their City of Westminster bill and together with City of Westminster & NABMA in 1999 launched a spurious propaganda campaign about pedlars being only door-to-door sellers and not street traders.
This mischief has spread to all areas of Local Authority management such that Sharpe Pritchard’s notion that pedlars must remain in perpetual motion whilst not trading door-to-door has become a rallying call to tarnish the good name of Pedlary.
This urban myth was thrown out this year by Select Committee on Bournemouth & Manchester bills finding that pedlars may continue to trade house to house but for those who do trade in the street, certain conditions could apply to ensure public perception that pedlars are mobile trading pedestrians.
The government through BIS is consulting on how to increase the burdens on pedlary by changing the Certificate regime to become a Licensing regime for casual trading under Local Authority regulation.
For the live unemployment register this will be equivalent to closing a factory employing 4000 workers in one stroke.
The BIS consultation lacks vision on how to preserve the cultural identity of Pedlary and instead proposes prohibition through regulation.
Will Ministers Mandleson & Brennan intervene?
Or do pedlars call BIS to task through Judicial Review?
The question is put!
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