From the editor-in-chief Uniting against risk Eleni Chalkidou Editor-in-chief elenic@tsi.org.uk As I am sitting at the airport excitedly waiting to board my planeto Glasgow en route to the SCOTSS meeting, I cant help but wonder why we cant all be more proactive in trying to eliminate risks. So it was good to see that support for some of our core asks is all around us. In a letter to the Prime Minister and co-signed by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and several safety bodies, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) stated it was extremely concerned that thousands of dangerous appliances are still being used in homes across the UK and demanded urgent action. It is frightening that an estimated three fires a day in the UK are caused by tumble dryers, while some fridges and freezers are still produced with a flammable plastic backing, according to the LFB. Since 2010, firefighters have attended 2,170 fires involving white goods in London alone. In line with CTSIs asks, the LFB is demanding that a central website be set up listing all product recalls, so people can search with ease what risks exist. Given that it is the holiday season, press interest in August focused significantly on the car-hire industry. Both UK regulators and the EU Commission have been looking at this sector for the last couple of years. I was informed that issues usually arise around transparency of charges and contractual terms, with consumers often reporting significant financial losses when they are on holiday and least prepared to deal with them. The European Consumer Centre UK (ECC UK) team, which is delivered by CTSI, regularly assists regulators and policymakers by supplying data from the many complaints they receive on the issue. Despite the work being done to improve the sector, the team has received 704 complaints in the first eight months of 2017, compared with 695 complaints in 2016 as a whole. Interestingly, the governments recent paper on cross-border civil judicial cooperation frameworks looks at enforcement and dispute resolution, and presupposes that there will be a new, deep and special relationship between the UK and the EU once Britain leaves. It expects arguments that arise will be settled through a joint mechanism for international arbitration. Consumers should be confident that, if they have a dispute, they can bring a claim in their own countrys courts regardless of where the supplier is based, and that the resulting judgment will be enforceable. The ECC UK already operates in this manner as part of the EUCommission network, with one such centre established in each member state. The team delivers around 17,000 consumer cases per year across a range of contracts for government, including supporting the online dispute resolution platform and dealing with pre-shopping, price discrimination and international cross-border cases. Finally, I would like to welcome Malcolm Craig, chartered trading standards practitioner from South Lanarkshire Council, who succeeds Sara Barry as chair of CTSI Council for one year, starting this month. We wish him well in his new role. Thanks for reading. Eleni