HC Library “Regulation of Street Traders & Pedlars”

Regulation of Street Traders & Pedlars (SN05693)

This article updates the government’s current policy on regulation and legislative proposals and is updated from time to time as policy evolves.

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Pedlars written questions in the House of Lords at the bottom of the document remain substantively unanswered as government struggles with interpreting the Services Directive and applying implementation into UK law. In 2009 government report URN 09/1074 proposed retention and amendment of the Pedlars Act. In 2011 URN 11/542 proposed repeal of the Pedlars Act.

Pedlars object to this policy u-turn initially on the grounds that they were not consulted by way of formal Impact Assessment and secondly on the grounds that government justification is fallacious and relies on mis-interpretation of the spirit of intent of the European Services Directive 2006.

Another example of BIS mis-interpretation of the Services Directive occurred in late 2009 when BIS failed to read in the Services Directive Article 4(1) what constituted a “service provider” and as a consequence and aginst pedlars.info advice amended the Pedlars Act in the Provision of Services Regulation Act 2009 that removed some pedlars from protection under the Pedlars Act.

As a result of these failures pedlars continue to support the 2009 policy of retention and amendment and have made their own legislative amendment proposals to the Pedlars Act, the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act and the London Local Authorities Act.

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