Consumer Affairs Branch

Consumer Affairs Branch comprises the Trading Standards Service and Consumerline along with sections dealing with legislation, administration support, policy and debt advice.

Trading Standards Service

The role of the Trading Standards Service is to promote and maintain fair trading, protect consumers and enable reputable businesses to thrive within Northern Ireland. We do this by enforcing a wide range of consumer legislation in order to protect consumers and honest businesses. We will also give advice to businesses in order to help them comply with the law.

Consumerline

Consumerline is a telephone and online advice service for Northern Ireland.

Our telephone advisors will listen to each caller's query and provide clear, practical advice on a wide range of consumer issues. If it is appropriate we will forward details of your complaint to the Trading Standards Service for investigation.

To contact Consumerline, telephone 0300 123 6262 or log on to our website at www.consumerline.org

Debt Advice

DETI has funded the provision of free debt advice services at various locations throughout Northern Ireland since 2005.

Currently we fund two organizations to provide free local face to face debt advice services and one to provide a free telephone debt advice service.

The Citizens Advice Bureau run a face to face service under the banner of ‘Dealing with Debt’.

To avail of this service you can go to the CAB website at www.citizensadvice.co.uk

The second face to face service is run by Advice NI under the banner of ‘Debt Action NI’.

To avail of this service you can go to www.debtaction-ni.net where you will also find a full list of all DETI funded debt advice locations.

The telephone debt advice service is called advice4debtni and they can be contacted on 0800 917 4607 or you can get information from their website www.advice4debtni.com