Each month, we update you on new cases added to Violation Tracker UK and other interesting regulatory news. Sign up here to get this delivered straight to your inbox!
Black Friday marks the first day of the Make Amazon Pay campaign’s four days of action across the globe. Make Amazon Pay is comprised of over 80 organisations — including Good Jobs First — pushing the retail giant to pay its working livable wages, take responsibility for its massive fossil fuel energy use and pay the same taxes the rest of us do.
👉 Find out what actions are planned near you
Our newest database Violation Tracker Global has revealed Amazon’s penalty total across 45 countries since 2010 as over $2.4 billion (and this doesn’t include class-action lawsuits in the United States).
Here in the UK Amazon continues to enjoy lenient regulation; avoiding fines for anti-competitive practices, workplace safety offences and consumer-protection violations.
Read more in our latest blog piece.
Financial Conduct Authority slammed for ineffective regulation
Violation Tracker UK has been used in a report criticising the FCA published on Tuesday by the All-Parliamentary Group on Investment Fraud and Fairer Financial Services. Financial services receive the highest penalties of any sector in the UK, with repeat offenders seemingly undeterred by enforcement action.
You can read the report here and coverage in the Financial Times, BBC and the Guardian among other outlets.
In case you missed it…
We found that nearly 200 UK care firms with licences to sponsor migrant workers breached labour laws as part of a project with the Work Rights Centre into ‘the Forgotten Third’.
Cross-referencing Violation Tracker UK data since 2020 with the Care Quality Commission’s list of service providers, and then cross-referencing the matching entries with the Home Office’s register of firms licensed to sponsor visas, we found that 416 CQC-registered companies with a licence had a recent violation record, committing a combined total of over 1,000 violations.
👉 You can read the report, and our appendix, here. Reuters and the Guardian also reported on the findings.
Newly added to the database
- Priority Action Notices issued by the Care Inspectorate Wales in 2024
- S65 applications made by the Care Inspectorate for cancellation of services since 2010
Noteworthy Fines…
- Metro Bank has been fined £16.6 million for anti-money laundering failures
- Volkswagen Financial Services Limited has been ordered to pay £21 million in restitution, and a £5 million fine for failing to protect its customers in financial difficulties
- Wessex Water has been fined £500,000 for sewage dumping that killed over 2000 fish