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Blog posted by: Simon Varcoe (TRA), 26 July 2023.

Located along the M4 west of London, and along the newly created Elizabeth Line in Reading, the Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) is one of the government’s newest Arm’s Length Bodies (ALB).

What do we do?

Our purpose is to defend UK economic interests against unfair international trade practices. In short, this means we investigate and make recommendations on whether trade remedies, usually in the form of tariffs, are needed to prevent injury to UK businesses caused by unfair dumping, subsidisation or surges in imports.

We are a small but growing body of around 140 skilled professionals, made up of investigators, verifiers, lawyers, analysts, policy experts and supporting corporate functions. Since our creation in 2021, we’ve established a track record of efficient and effective delivery and providing government with recommendations based on clear evidence, targeted at addressing any injury caused. While considering the interests of domestic producers and other interested parties, we’re committed to building an organisational culture around our values of transparency, expertise, inclusion and integrity.

A great place to work

We are a small and friendly team of just 7 covering all external communications, from external affairs, events, digital and marketing. We hope to amplify the team with GCS apprentices too as they can learn and develop all their communication skills in our team.

We bring economic benefits to local businesses (we recently held our annual TRA staff event at Reading University in May) at much lower event costs than hosting in London. We are employing many new recruits to work in TRA who live outside London.

In a recent staff survey, 82% of our staff said they would recommend the TRA as a great place to work. Our goal is to make the TRA an expert and innovative place where people enjoy working. While our proximity to London allows a closeness to central government colleagues, nearly half of our staff live in Reading or the surrounding area. Others come from as far away as Wolverhampton and Cardiff to work with us.

We’re proud to be flying the flag for the government’s presence outside of London and while our trade investigations to date haven’t yet covered the three ‘Bs’ of Reading – beer, bulbs and biscuits – we’re staying in the area, with an upcoming office move expected to see us remain in the town centre.

Currently we have two trade law students with us from Reading University. We are presenting UK trade policy at Surrey University events in July and September. And we have enjoyed having work experience students from local 6th form colleges who want to work in Communications.

Get in touch

We are always keen to collaborate with other government comms teams and would love to hear from anyone across the profession who wants to know more about working in a small and friendly start-up organisation.

If you have any questions, please email: commsteam@traderemedies.gov.uk

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