Funding, amounting to around £800,000, will be provided by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, formerly the Department of Trade and Industry.

A team of seven officers is to be established — three in Dundee — plus a regional intelligence officer who will liaise with other agencies such as the Office of Fair Trading, the police and Customs and Revenue.

In a report, Dundee City Council’s head of environmental health and trading standards, Albert Oswald, said BERR had funded three pilot schemes in England aimed at reducing rogue trading practices.

Following their success, the scheme was extended to all English regions, Scotland and Wales.

“It is intended a scambuster team will concentrate on the type of scams activity normally beyond the capacity of individual local authorities to deal with,” Mr Oswald said.

“These will be larger scale illegal activities that operate across local authority boundaries and it is expected the team will work across a whole region to identify and eliminate fraudulent trading practices.”

As well as directly tackling rogue trading, the team will warn and educate consumers about dishonest traders and the types of scam being operated.

Mr Oswald said bids to host the team were evaluated by the Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards in Scotland and the one involving Dundee had been the clear winner.

“The focus will be around protecting communities from rogue traders, highlighting and addressing areas of widespread consumer detriment in the supply of services, counter-feiting, and doorstep and vehicle crime,” he said.