An exciting new website has been launched aimed at teaching younger members of the community about their consumer rights and responsibilities.

The website, set up and run by Cambridgeshire County Council trading standards, is the first of its kind in the country.

Teachers, parents and children across the country can access for free the innovative new website Ask CEDRIC. With a click of a mouse schools will be able to obtain all the consumer education information and resources they need to help teach parts of the newly-introduced Citizenship subject in the National Curriculum.

CEDRIC - which stands for Consumer Education Resource and Information Centre - aims to bring together the wealth of trading standards related consumer education resources in three sections: Schools, Community Education and Business Education. At present, the schools section is up and running, and in the near future the other sections relating to business education and community education will be completed.

Thanks to funding from the DTI and support from Cambridgeshire County Council, access to the Ask CEDRIC website will be free.

Ask Cedric provides teaching notes, student work sheets and practical activities and many other resources as well as links to other related sites, which will all help to support teaching in the classroom.

Liz Levett, City of York trading standards manager, said she welcomed the addition of the website to assist with consumer education work, especially as this website was designed to encourage younger people, who were the consumers of the future, to learn about their rights and responsibilities.

The site provides a valuable resource for schools and flexible education aid for teachers to help pupils become confident consumers able to protect themselves and their families by knowing their consumer rights and what to do when things go wrong.

The website is a professional and comprehensive resource which covers Key Stages 1 to 4. The information will be updated by trading standards fair trading experts and includes a wide variety of links to other supporting websites. In effect the site has been created to provide a free one-stop-website for consumer education.

Ask Cedric can be found at www.askcedric.org.uk

Leaflets about the site can be obtained from York Trading Standards.

- If you want information about this, consumer education or any other consumer matter call in at 9 St Leonard's Place, York, telephone 01904 551562, fax 01904 551590 or email trading.standards@york.gov.uk

Updated: 10:26 Thursday, November 21, 2002