What is ACS Assured Advice?
ACS' Assured Advice guides provide accredited standards for in-store procedures, such as health and safety or underage sales.
By signing up to the ACS Assured Advice scheme and following our guidelines, the procedures in your store will be respected by ALL local enforcement officers including Environmental health and Trading Standards officers.
What Advice is Assured?
You will know if the advice from our guides is assured if it is marked with the Assured Advice tick logo.
If it doesn’t have this mark, it’s still great advice, but the law of ‘primary authority’ doesn’t cover the product or procedure and so can’t be legally assured.
When might ACS Assured Advice be useful to me?
One of the most frustrating problems that you may face as a retailer is the discrepancy between different local authorities' interpretation of laws and policies.
If you follow the ACS Assured Advice guides in your store, local enforcement authorities cannot make you change any of your store's procedures and policies.
For example:
In your store, you have implemented a training policy for your staff to prevent underage sales that is based on the Challenge 25 policy as recommended by ACS in our 'Preventing Underage Sales' guide.
However, your local authority decides that the rule has to be 'Challenge 30' and expects you to retrain all your staff. In this example, because you are following ACS' Assured Advice and providing Challenge 25 training, this means that the local authority cannot make you change this procedure.
How do I sign up to ACS Assured Advice?
Assured Advice is free to all direct ACS members. By signing up to become a member with us, we will opt you in to the scheme which will provide the protections of Assured Advice when dealing with enforcement authorities.
To find out more about our current membership rates, give us a call on 01252 515001 or email [email protected]
