Rejected claim

The British manufacturers’ association BHHMA, acting on behalf of its members, has tried to obtain an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) into several of the bigger DIY and supermarket chains on the grounds of unfair demands. However, their claim was rejected on the grounds that intervention is only necessary where the concerns of consumers are affected. “OFT has come to the conclusion that only 20 per cent of sales of household goods are achieved by supermarkets and 50 per cent of hardware sales by DIY superstores,” explains Allen Johnson, the association’s chief executive, “which means that the degree of concentration in the retail trade is not sufficiently high to justify any official intervention.”