A summary of our published complaint successes…so far

We have had numerous successful complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and other regulators.

New pages on our website detail these successes to date and we'll update them as we win further complaints.

Note that in all cases, it is the regulator that decides whether any complaint is valid or not and it is the regulator that assesses the complaint and decides the outcome according to the criteria laid down in their rules, regulations and laws.

We have no say in deciding these outcomes or the sanctions applied.

Note also that any decision an advertiser makes about the future of their business or how they choose to conduct it after any complaint is entirely a matter for them. All we seek is compliance with the appropriate rules, regulations and laws.

Further details of these complaints can usually be found in our News section.

We will update our results list as new complaints are published.

Advertising Standards Authority

The full list of ASA adjudications and informally resolved cases can he found here.

In summary:

• 15 upheld adjudications
• 4 partly upheld adjudications
• 18 informally resolved cases
• 85 issues investigated
• 231 instances of CAP Code breached identified
• 17 instances of CAP Code not breached identified
• 65 breaches of CAP Code 3.1 Misleading advertising
• 62 breaches of CAP Code 3.7 Substantiation (ie where the advertiser was unable to substantiate the claims made)
• 75 breaches of the CAP Codes on medical claims

The following chart shows the various sections of the CAP Code and the number of points found to be in breach and not in breach of these sections, as identified by the ASA. It also includes the number of informally resolved cases.

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

Five notices of complaints investigations have been published by the MHRA, covering some 29 sellers of homeopathy products. The full list can be found here.

Trading Standards

We have had several successes with Trading Standards but, unfortunately, outcomes are not published — unless a case ends up in court.

For example, we had successful complaints concerning a number of conferences giving advice on cancer treatments and high street Chinese herbalists making claims in their shop windows. We hope to bring you full details in the near future.

Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council

Our 100 complaints have been 'informally resolved' to the satisfaction of the CNHC, but they have published nothing about this. We will bring you more on this later.

Other regulators

We have had successes with the Health and Care Professions Council with complaints about 39 podiatrists advertising the unlicensed Marigold Therapy, but unfortunately, they have not published the outcome on their website.

22 February 2014