By Eric Nicolson

THE OPERATOR of the Errol car boot sale has been required to prepare a blueprint on how it is going to combat the sale of pirated DVDs at the weekly Sunday market.

Scotland’s largest car boot sale, which attracts up to 10,000 people per event, was in danger of being shut down yesterday in light of complaints by trading standards and police about the flagrant sale of counterfeit goods.

Operated by Mike McWilliam on behalf of Morris Leslie Limited, the market’s licence was up for renewal for the next three years with Perth and Kinross Council’s licensing committee.

The committee had received written representations by the council’s trading standards department and police which claimed that counterfeit items, particularly pirated DVDs, were being blatantly offered for sale and cited a lack of effective action by the operator to discourage this.

Indeed, it was pointed out that known sellers of the counterfeit goods were being allowed to continue trading after police warnings were disregarded.

Committee members unanimously agreed that the operator should meet police and trading standards and form a management plan to deal with the problem, which will be brought back before them on May 31.

The sale, which has been held for 15 years, will continue to operate in the meantime.

Alan Lindsay of Miller Hendry represented Morris Leslie and Mr McWilliam at yesterday’s meeting and said Errol is being targeted by traders who used to go to the Barrowland and Ingliston. He added his clients were prepared to train members of staff, in conjunction with trading standards, to act as covert stewards.

Derek Hutchison, of trading standards, said, “I would be happy to take that training on to help them identify mainly fake DVDs. Identification of them is actually simple.”

Mr Hutchison told the meeting that during the last year officers visited the Errol car boot sale 21 times. They made 16 seizures over that period, taking possession of more than 2000 DVDs.

For the police, Chief Inspector Roddy Ross said, “What we’re looking for is a little more rigour in taking forward the steps we’d like to see.”

Mr McWilliam told members at least six traders had been barred from Errol.

Councillor Liz Grant asked Mr McWilliam if it would be possible to ban the sale of DVDs at the market but he said that this would be “pandering to the criminal element and penalising 90% of the people there.”

Committee convener Alan Grant observed, “My own view is that we take a little time to make a decision. I’m thinking about further dialogue on how best to deal with the problem, then formulate a management plan.

“We would then come back and see if Tayside Police and trading standards are happy rather than us saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at this meeting.”

This proposal was unanimously backed by his colleagues.