FAKE designer clothes seized by the borough council's trading standards team will help raise funds for charity.

The clothes will have all their labels removed and sold off at knockdown prices

More than 2,000 items which had been falsely labelled with the names of top fashion houses, are to be recycled and sold to fund research into birth defects.

They will cost between £25 and £40 a item and the counterfeit Ralph Lauren, Timberland and Giorgio Armani items will make thousands for the national charity, the Birth Defects Foundation.

The illegal goods are some of those seized by Swindon Borough Council's trading standards team since 1991 and they will be sold at three stores in the Midlands.

Rob Taylour, of Swindon's trading standards department, said: Selling fake goods and pirated software is among the most serious of deceptive practices.

Some consumers may believe that buying goods they know to be counterfeit or pirated saves them money and does no damage.

But fake goods can be dangerous or destructive, ranging from defective brake pads to virus-infected computer software."

Now trading standards have teamed up with BDF Newlife who will securely remove the counterfeit branding and then sell the items to raise funds for the Staffordshirebased charity.