The 95th Annual General Meeting of the Association took place in Wickham Halls on Friday 27th March and was attended by about 40 residents.
Richard Barnes opened the meeting by welcoming attendees and outlining the format of the evening. As the Treasurer was unavailable, he then talked through the accounts for 2025 – these will be published in the Summer Newsletter.
Katrina Iddon (Secretary) then conducted the election of Officers and committee members. Colin Swinburn was elected Chairman and Richard Douglas (Treasurer) and Katrina Iddon (Secretary) stood again and were returned unopposed. The independent auditor, Martin Allen was also re-elected.
Colin Swinburn gave a short acceptance speech on being elected to the chair – this can be found in a separate news article.
After a short break for refreshments, Richard Barnes introduced our guest speaker Rob Vale, Head of Bromley Trading Standards.
Rob said that, when he first started in his role many years ago, he dealt mainly with weights and measures issues and petrol sales. Some of the issues remain but the emphasis has changed to fraud, financial abuse and unsafe products exacerbated by social media, online scams and AI. He explained that, for this talk he would concentrate on doorstep crime and scams and urged members not to think about themselves as falling for scams but being victims of crime.
He urged members to be aware of courier fraud where the victim is apparently contacted by a bank and/or the police and told that their account has been infiltrated in some way and that they should withdraw a large amount of money and hand it over to a ‘courier’. Sometimes this involves handing over a debit card after gleaning the PIN from the victim. Many people ask how the victim can be fooled like this but, Rob explained, that if you’re caught at the wrong time or state of mind, your guard may be down. Bromley is the worst Borough in London for courier fraud with the largest number of victims and the largest amount of money stolen.
Doorstep crime includes callers who offer to do work, say on the roof or the drive, and the costs rise as they find more work to do. This also includes where homeowners receive flyers through the letterbox offering similar services. The outcomes can be very stressful for the victims especially when physical intimidation is used to gain payment. Rob urged potential victims to check whether the person offering to do the work is really a member of the trade organisation they claim or to check with the Bromley Trading Standards list of checked traders at bromley.gov.uk/tradingstandardschecked.
The offers can also arrive by email flyer, and he urged members not to click on any links in the email if they are not sure of the sender and the deal looks too good to be true.
In response to a question about boot sales, Rob said that his department used to check these but because of limited resources they now target vape shops and the sale of illicit tobacco. In response to a question about reviews of products and services, Rob emphasised that they deal more with false good reviews and recommended the use of good, independently audited websites like Trust Pilot, etc.
Rob concluded by explaining that Bromley Trading Standards are seen as being successful at catching criminals, prosecuting and imprisoning them. They focus more on prevention now, but they have recovered more than £3 million over the last 15 years.
Richard Barnes thanked Rob for his presentation and thanked people for attending.
The information handed out by Rob regarding what to do and who to contact if you suspect you are the victim of these crimes, can be found on our website under NEWS