The British Hallmarking Council (BHC) has awarded the Touchstone Award 2025 to London Trading Standards (LTS) for its role in ‘Operation Stamping it Out’, at the recent Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) annual conference in Blackpool.
The Touchstone Award, launched by the BHC in 2012, sponsored by the National Association of Jewellers and supported by the CTSI, recognises the most effective initiative relating to hallmarking enforcement or education delivered by a local authority.
Launched in 2023, ‘Operation Stamping It Out’ is a pioneering hallmarking education and enforcement project, established and funded by the London Assay Office and delivered in conjunction with the WRi Group. It 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), and is delivered through a programme of education, awareness and enforcement.
Across the 8 LTS teams involved in the operation:
- 132 intelligence reports were generated
- 311 retailers were visited
- more than 200 verbal or written warnings were issued for hallmarking non-compliance
- over £250,000 worth of silver and gold jewellery without hallmarks has been seized
- 4 active criminal prosecutions are underway
The Chair of the BHC, Noel Hunter, said:
The British Hallmarking Council congratulates London Trading Standards on winning the Touchstone Award. It was an incredible team effort which has produced, and continues to produce, unprecedented results. It will undoubtedly provide an enforcement model that can be used elsewhere across the UK. The BHC looks forward to supporting that development.
The Chief Executive of the National Association of Jewellers, Ben Massey, 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.
The Director of the London Assay Office, Will Evans, said:
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.
