Off licence fined total of £1,500 for selling kingsize cigarettes to teenager in Trading Standards operation

KP News and Off Licence, in Weedon Road, sold a pack of 20 Mayfair kingsize cigarettes to a 16-year-old in May 2018.

But the teenager was actually sent as part of a test purchase by Northamptonshire trading standards.

Now, the company and a director have been fined a total of £1,500 for selling age-restricted products to a child.

Eshani Ltd and Arundhati Patel pleaded guilty to the breach at Northampton Magistrates yesterday (January 22).

It comes after Patel sold cigarettes to a person under the age of 18 in 2016 and was made to sign an Enterprise Act pledging not to sell cigarettes to persons under the age of 18 in the future.

Yesterday, Eshani Ltd was fined £1,000 while Patel as a director was fined £500. Full prosecution costs were awarded and a £150 victim surcharge was ordered to be paid.

Eight visits were carried out during the test purchase on May 31, 2018, with two premises selling to the underage volunteer.

A spokesman for Northamptonshire County Council said: “This case demonstrates that our Trading Standards team will not hesitate to take action if they suspect a business of selling age-restricted products to children, and we will continue to carry out checks and test purchases whenever we receive complaints and intelligence about underage sales.

“Both businesses and the individual seller can be prosecuted for selling and it’s essential that they must ask for valid proof of age from young people.

“We recommend that they at least challenge anyone who looks under 21, and we are aware that many shops challenge anyone who looks under 25.”