MORE resources are needed to fight an “epidemic” of scams and doorstep crime in Ceredigion made worse by the pandemic, a report has said.

A report by Cllr Gareth Lloyd, the cabinet member with responsibility for public protection was put before members of Ceredigion council’s healthier communities overview and scrutiny committee this week.

The report said that “scams have sadly become part of everyday life” and are “getting more sophisticated”, leading to calls for more resources to be made avilable for the Trading Standards team in the county.

“It is probably reasonable to talk about a global “epidemic” of scams and doorstep crime and there is significant consumer and business detriment involved,” the report said.

“The current capacity of the Trading Standards team given the broad range of other regulatory activity for which Trading Standards undertakes, only allows it to be intelligence-led and to focus its resources on enforcement activities associated with rogue or unscrupulous traders operating within Ceredigion.

“Although enforcement plays a role, the service also tries to take a wider, more innovative approach alongside our normal enforcement procedures but wished it had more resources to undertake more preventative work through awareness raising and education.”

The report highlights that of the 552 reports to Trading Standards team in Ceredigion received from Citizens Advice in 2019/20 - the last year that figures were available - 40 “were specifically related to scams and doorstep crime.”

During the same year, the Trading Standards team also dealt with 48 scam victim referrals from the National Trading Scams Team.

“Action Fraud reports that since lockdown began, over £2.5bn has been lost to scams and this is just what has been recorded - the actual figure is likely to be much higher,” the report said.

“They are relatively easy crimes to commit, the degree of risk to the perpetrator is less than in many other criminal activities, for the most part the offences are under-penalised and many, if not all, of the enforcement partners are struggling with resources.

“Criminals who perpetuate these types of scams are generally based out of county, all too often outside of the UK, which makes it very difficult to prosecute them within our local enforcement authority.”

During the pandemic, with people having to stay at home, “sophisticated scams”, mostly via text message and email saw 67 complaints registered with the council’s Trading Standards team.

They included texts and emails being sent to people to lure them to apply for the Covid-19 vaccine; automated messages saying that BT were going to suspend broadband; automated message saying the call is from Amazon Prime claiming that they would charge the recipients card £79 for Amazon Prime; and text messages purporting to be from Royal Mail stating there is a package that needs to be rescheduled.