OFT Futures Advisory Board

As an independent professional organisation, the OFT plays a leading role in promoting and protecting consumer interests throughout the UK, while ensuring that businesses are fair and competitive. Our tools to carry out this work are the powers granted to the OFT under consumer and competition legislation.

We expect to consider between 180-230 public mergers, and that around 30-50 of these will merit detailed consideration at case review meetings. The Office of Fair Trade (OFT) [1] regularly runs campaigns which are designed to raise consumer awareness about issues such as scams and shoppers' rights. It investigates between 25 and 40 cases of suspected cartel activity per year, and has a "Scambusters Team" organised to take action against scams aimed at UK consumers.

The organisation aims to conduct 7 market studies per year to assess problems within a certain market. Some examples of studies conducted include: UK airports, payment protection insurance, the UK grocery market and the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme.

Ann Rossiter, of the Social Market Foundation think tank, is an OFT board member.