London Trading Standards win 2025 Touchstone Award for “Stamping Out” hallmarking infractions
London Trading Standards – a collective of trading standards teams from the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Camden, Westminster, Hackney, Ealing, Waltham Forest, and Newham, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea – have been awarded the British Hallmarking Council’s (BHC) Touchstone Award 2025, for their role in Operation Stamping It Out. A pioneering hallmarking education and enforcement project, which is delivered by WRi Group on behalf of the London Assay Office.
Launched in 2023, Operation Stamping It Out aims to ensure retailers of silver, gold, platinum and palladium jewellery and artworks in London and the Southeast are compliant with the Hallmarking Act (1973) through a programme of education, awareness, and enforcement.
Hallmarking is one of the oldest continuous forms of consumer protection in use today, and can trace its origins to the reign of Henry II, more than 840 years ago. It offers customers, retailers and the trade assurance that objects made from precious metals have been independently scientifically tested (assayed), and through the marks that are applied (the Hallmark), tells them what an object is made from, when it was made, who sent it to be Hallmarked (the sponsor), and which of the four UK Assay Offices tested and marked it.
The Hallmarking Act (1973) says that “it is an offence for any person, in the course of trade or business, to describe an un-hallmarked article as being wholly or partly made of precious metal(s) or to supply un-hallmarked articles to which such a description is applied.” and that “all dealers supplying precious metal jewellery (or other items made of precious metal) shall display a notice explaining the approved hallmarks”.
The Act gives Trading Standards Officers the power to carry out inspections, investigate breaches, and take enforcement actions, including the seizure of objects that do not comply. However, more than a decade of austerity and the resulting budget cuts within local government has left Trading Standards departments over stretched and under resourced.
Through Operation Stamping It Out - which has the support of the British hallmarking Council, is funded by the London Assay Office, and developed and led by WRi Group - London Trading Standards have engaged in a collaborative programme of research, intelligence gathering, education and enforcement. Across the eight Trading Standards Teams involved in the operation, 132 intelligence reports have been generated, 311 retailers have been visited, more than 200 verbal or written warnings have been issued for non-compliance, over £250,000 worth of silver and gold jewellery without hallmarks has been seized, and 4 active criminal prosecutions are underway.
Trading Standards officer, Tariq Mohammed shows an example of the more than 800 items of un-hallmarked jewellery with an estimated retail value of £200,000 that were seized in Camden on Friday 28th March 2025
The visits, which were made to market stalls, high street shops, and luxury boutiques of internationally recognised luxury brands, uncovered that more than 75% were in breach of the Hallmarking Act, predominantly for failure to display a dealers notice.
“It’s clear that many retailers and manufacturers of precious metal jewellery are unaware of the Hallmarking Act, or their obligations under it. Operation Stamping It Out shows that providing easy to understand information about the Act to the trade, and hands on support to Trading Standards teams is key to improving the situation”
While many of these breaches discovered by London Trading Standards come down to a lack of education or access to information, a proportion are made in full knowledge of their illegality, both in bricks and mortar stores, and over the internet. Research conducted as part of Operation Stamping it Out shows that the relative ease of selling non-compliant goods through online platforms like Amazon Marketplace and eBay, along with limited Trading Standards resources, has created a golden opportunity for unscrupulous traders to sell precious metal items that have not been tested or hallmarked, and often infringe on the Intellectual Property of luxury brands.
Intelligence received by Waltham Forest Trading Standards about such activities, along with online test purchases made by WRi Group, led to a joint operation with Camden Trading Standards, and inspections of premises in both boroughs in June 2024. As a result, a cache of silver and gold items without hallmarks were seized, and an active criminal prosecution is underway, supported by expert evidence from the London Assay Office.
“For more than 700 years, the London Assay Office has protected consumers and the trade by ensuring the quality of precious metals. We are incredibly proud to support Operation Stamping It Out, and thrilled that the collaboration between WRi Group and London Trading Standards - which has seen more than £250,000 of illegal items removed from the streets so far - has been recognised with the 2025 Touchstone Award. The dedication and professionalism shown by the teams from the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Camden, Westminster, Hackney, Ealing, Waltham Forest, and Newham, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to protecting consumers and businesses, shows how much can be achieved when we work together towards a common goal.”
The success of Operation Stamping It Out, and the support that it offers to those enforcing the law, has undoubtedly raised the profile of Hallmarking within the Trading Standards community. With requests from local authorities in Milton Keynes and Southampton expanding the reach of the programme outside of the London Boroughs in the coming months, and more than 300 retailer visits planned by the end of 2026.
Speaking at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute’s 2025 conference in Blackpool last week, Ben Massey, Chief Executive of the National Association of Jewellers said:
“Operation Stamping It Out has laid bare the serious threat that the illicit trade in un-hallmarked precious metals poses to consumers and to the UK jewellery industry—an industry worth £10 billion annually and supporting over 60,000 jobs. The outstanding results achieved by London Trading Standards are a testament to what can be accomplished with focused enforcement, and the 2025 Touchstone Award is richly deserved. However, this must not remain a localised effort. It is imperative that Trading Standards teams and related agencies come together to adopt and implement a similar programme nationally, ensuring a consistent and robust response across traditional retail and digital marketplaces.”
As one of the oldest forms of consumer protection, Hallmarking addresses the most persistent challenges faced by the industry – that the purity of a precious metal item cannot be known or guaranteed without scientific testing and that bad actors will take advantage of this whenever they can. Even more so when those empowered to uphold and enforce the law have had their budgets slashed and their resources curtailed, forcing them to make tough decisions about which areas to focus on. In this environment it is perhaps no surprise that enforcing the Hallmarking Act has become a low priority for Trading Standards nationally.
But all is not doom and gloom. While a pessimist could choose to see dark skies all around, an optimist would find the opportunities that a project of this type brings exhilarating. Assessing the situation realistically however, looking at the scale and scope of the collaboration that Operation Stamping It Out has enabled and the education and enforcement actions delivered so far, it’s clear that the linings of these cloudy skies are gilded with silver and gold.
Photographs used with kind permission of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (image 1) and Graham Mogg (image 2).