Retailers are set to be subject to an increasing number of checks by Trading Standards officers, after the government announced an extra £10m to fund the prevention of underage sales, and illegal tobacco and vape products.
The Department of Health and Social Care says the money will pay for 80 apprentice enforcement officers, who will be tasked with helping prevent “harmful tobacco and vape products finding their way into neighbourhood shops and stopping underage sales”.
Trading Standards seized over a million illegal vapes, 19 million counterfeit cigarettes and over five tonnes of illicit rolling tobacco in 2024. John Herriman, chief executive at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, says the £10m was a “much needed investment”, which would bolster his organisation’s ability to “support businesses in complying with current and future tobacco and vaping regulations”.
The news comes ahead of the forthcoming Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which, amongst other measures, will ban the sale of such products to anyone born on or after January 1 2009, effectively outlawing smoking for future generations and creating a “smokefree UK”.
Retailers will also face the prospect of on-the-spot fines of £200 for breaching age restrictions, together with a licensing scheme that will run parallel to (but separate from) alcohol licensing requirements.
Trading Standards’ extra funding follows a £100m investment into HMRC and Border Forces’ Illicit Tobacco Strategy, which aims to tackle the sale of illegal cigarettes and rolling tobacco that have not been subject to duty payments.
