Crackdown on ‘dodgy’ shops stepped up in Coventry
Coventry City Council say they are stepping up enforcement on illegal tobacco and vape shops, amid links to organised crime
Coventry City Council is preparing to step up enforcement on dodgy shops using new powers in the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026.
The new legislation was passed in April and aims to create a “smoke-free generation” by banning the sale of tobacco goods, herbal smoking products and cigarette papers to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009. This officially begins in January 2027.
The council’s head of regulations and communities, Debbie Cahalin-Heath, told the Scrutiny Co-ordination Committee that concentrations of suspect shops linked to illicit sales affected the diversity and vitality of local high streets and visible enforcement was needed to reassure people that action was being taken.
Ms Cahalin-Heath explained: “This issue, both in Coventry and nationally, is big, it’s quite huge,” she said.
Some dodgy shops were linked to wider organised criminality and the council worked closely with HMRC, police and immigration officials on joint operations that involved exploitation, tax evasion, illegal working and money laundering.
She added: “The tactics the criminals are using are getting more sophisticated. They tend to be 10 steps ahead of us, which is a major challenge when we’re dealing with these types of premises.
“So our objective is not simply to seize the illegal product, it’s to disrupt the business model itself, improve compliance and make illegal activity harder to sustain.
“Stock is often concealed or moved. It’s moved around in vehicles between shops, and operators change, which creates a challenge for us. More often than not, we’ll close the premises down, and they’ll reopen two shops down the road two days later.”
She added: “The new Act that’s coming through and the implementation of it will put additional burdens on an already-stretched team.
“It will change how tobacco and vaping products are controlled. It introduces a smoke-free generation, with age-of-sale controls for vaping and nicotine products.
“A retail licensing scheme will come into play, and there’ll be stronger sanctions and a required enforcement programme. This is coming in phases, over a period of time.
“On the licensing scheme, we haven’t got any real details of how that looks at the minute. But again, that will be another burden to the authority and also to legitimate traders that are trying to do the right thing.”
Officers would need training and the council would have to clearly communicate the impact of the legislation to retailers, residents, schools, members and partner organisations.
She told councillors: “I think it needs a real coordinated, bigger approach to tackling this problem on the high street.
“We can do a small section as trading standards and we’ll do that to the best of our ability, but it will need that wider collaborative approach, we’ll have to monitor repeat offending, compliance and disruption of priority premises
“Educating the public as to what harm of these products are doing on the high street and the impact of that is really important . We need to stop the supply chain, we need to stop the demand and stop people buying them. So a lot of work has to be done in that respect, and we already looking at some campaigns.”
Cllr John McNicholas, Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Cohesion, told the committee there was a “determination to ensure that we regain our high streets.”
He said: “The Tobacco and Vapes Act is part of the tools that we can and will use, and are using, to ensure that illegal sales are not happening in Coventry. I would like to take this opportunity publicly to be saying if you are trading illegally, beware, because we will be ensuring that you will be closed down.
“We will need the help of the local media, we will need the help of communities to tell us what the issues are in their localities, and we will need you as ward councillors to let me know, let the officers know, the particular issues, so can can then deal with them.
“We do have our intelligence and we are working with the police to ensure that we are acting as best we can within the law to ensure we regain our high street.”
A police representative told the meeting that enforcement of dodgy shops was a key priority this year. West Midlands Police had carried out “dozens and dozens” of operations with the council’s Trading Standard team but the biggest challenge was the scale of the problem.