Lincolnshire Trading Standards sees huge success in battling illegal tobacco and vape sales across the county.
Trading Standards found shops selling illegal items and some shops ignored age restrictions too. They issued 68 closure orders this year, almost three times last year’s total, and these orders can last three months.
Boston was the main focus initially, with police linking many shops to bad behavior there. Sixteen Boston shops had to close, however, the crackdown expanded to other towns including Lincoln, Spalding, and most big towns.
Trading Standards worked with landlords and they evicted 20 businesses permanently; notably, other businesses might have left on their own.
Some people were arrested in Boston when they re-entered a closed shop to move products to a new place, but that new location was also shut down.
Last year, they made 82 seizures at 63 places, seizing 670,236 cigarettes, 371kg of tobacco, and 16,826 illegal vapes.
Thirteen cases finished in court in 2024, resulting in defendants getting suspended sentences totaling nearly five years, plus over 1,000 hours of unpaid work.
The service got over £20,000, representing their share of seized assets, and they expect over £25,000 this year.
The council’s committee will discuss this report soon due to the fact that illegal sales harm honest shops, which struggle due to criminals.
Illegal shops often hire undocumented workers, and people are sometimes trafficked into these situations where criminals force them to commit crimes for profit.
The masterminds are often not in the shops, leaving people working in the shops who are often victims themselves.