South Gloucestershire Council

Published: 11/11/2014

Officers from South Gloucestershire Council Trading Standards have donated items of clothing recovered during raids to His Church charity which will be recycled and put to good use.

Senior Fair Trade Officer Neil Derrick is pictured handing over the garments to His Church charity worker Sarah Wayment. More than 60 items of counterfeit clothing including hooded tops, sweatshirts and t-shirts will now have the false labels removed and replaced with the charity’s logo. They are then donated to homeless charities or shelters to benefit some of society’s most vulnerable people.

As well as the clothing, officers also presented the Lincolnshire-based charity with a printing press and printing equipment used to produce the counterfeit clothing which was also seized during one of the raids. The charity will use this to help rebrand the garments.

“We are very pleased to be able to benefit charitable causes while at the same time stopping criminal activity,” said Senior Fair Trade Officer Neil Derrick. “Storing fake clothes and associated seized equipment while we wait for a court decision can incur costs for the council. Once the items have been forfeited during the court proceedings, councils then have to find funds for incineration or landfill costs. However, thanks to the partnership we have formed with His Church charity, these costs have been eliminated by recycling the goods.”

Richard Humphrey, Senior Coordinator of His Church charity, said: “The heat press equipment donated by South Gloucestershire Council will be hugely beneficial and increase our capacity to rebrand the heavily branded t-shirts donated by the Trading Standards team. We remain enormously grateful for our ongoing partnership with the council which directly benefits local charities helping people who are facing difficult circumstances such as the Emmaus Project and the Newry Walk Centre.”

The contributions from Trading Standards teams across the country benefit around 250 homeless centres and women’s shelters.

Sarah Wayment of His Church charity and Neil Derrick from South Gloucestershire Council Trading Standards with some of the counterfeit clothing