Promoting Consumer Education: Trends, Policies and Good Practices (PDF)

United Kingdom (p. 150-151)

Goals and institutional framework

In the United Kingdom, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) plays the major role in consumer education. The OFT published its Consumer Education: A Strategy and Framework in 2004. Under this strategy, the OFT has for the first time statutory power to use consumer education as a tool. The strategy sets out the aim of giving "consumers the skills and knowledge to function confidently, effectively, and responsibly when buying goods and services" (OFT, 2004).

However, the only current statutory reference to consumer education appears in the Enterprise Act 2006, Section 6, which confers upon the OFT discretionary power to publish educational materials or carry out other educational activitiep. The framework for the strategy was set up by the OFT. In concrete terms, the strategy’s objectives are to seek to identify: the skills and knowledge consumers need, instances where a lack of skills and knowledge leads to harm, and how skills can be developed and knowledge improved to meet identified gapp. In addition, as there is increasing recognition of the need for consumer responsibility in the interests of sustainability, some consumer education that is currently delivered in the United Kingdom has a broad agenda driven by goals beyond the traditional market, such as social and ethical goalp.

The OFT recognises that empowering consumers helps achieve the broader goal of making markets work well for consumers generally, but its statutory responsibilities as well as its consumer education work have thus far concentrated on maximising transactional benefits for consumerp. The strategy aims to deliver targeted consumer education by increasing co-ordination and making the best use of available resourcep.

It has been recognised that most consumer education initiatives have been the work of individual organisations but that duplication of efforts and poor coordination have