'Lost all control': Licence stripped from Northampton town centre shop after officers find illicit tobacco and underage alcohol sales
A Northampton convenience store has been stripped of its premises licence after police found illicit tobacco on site and evidence of the shop of selling alcohol to an underage girl.
West Northamptonshire councillors on the authority’s licensing panel decided unanimously to revoke the licence from JBS Daily, 11 Bradshaw Street, after a hearing last week, on Tuesday October 28.
The review was called by Northamptonshire Police after trading standards officers found thousands of pounds of illicit tobacco and vapes, and officers allege that alcohol had been sold on the premises to a teenager, without proper identification checks.
In July, on a routine inspection, officers said they found 334 illegal vapes, 69 packets of cigarettes and 6 packets of hand rolling tobacco hidden in a rucksack under the counter and a box located at the back of the store.
A further incident, on September 22, was noted involving the sale of products to a 17-year-old girl. This came to light after police attended the shop for an unrelated incident and were informed that a frequent missing child they had come into contact with had bought alcohol from JBS Daily.
CCTV of the incident, where the teenage girls were clearly served a bottle of MAGNUM alcohol, was shown to councillors on the licensing panel during a private session.
Speaking at the premises licence hearing, the designated premises supervisor for the store, Bibin Jacob, explained that it was one of his employees who had brought the illegal tobacco into the premises without his knowledge, and that they had since been let go from the shop.
He added: “The licence is a privilege for me. The moment I received this documentation [from police], I understood the severity of this issue and had gone through all the CCTV and understand how exactly this issue had happened.
“The two of the girls who attended and bought the Magnum had previously showed ID to the staff. Unfortunately, we have limited resources confirming the genuinety [sic] of the document without checking if it is physically tampered.
“Even though it happened without my knowledge, I made so many changes after that.”
He said these included ensuring all purchases for tobacco and vapes had to be approved directly by him, increasing the number of cameras at the counter, putting up posters warning that any fraudulent IDs would be seized, and making sure that all employees complete the Challenge 25 induction policy and other training.
In a written report issued after the hearing, the panel found that, on the balance of probabilities, illegal tobacco products were being sold from the premises, alcohol was being sold to underage children and conditions of the licence were being breached.
Members gave some weight to the increased safety checks and measures that Mr Jacob said he had brought on, but still had concerns about whether the licensing objectives of the prevention of crime and disorder and the protection of children would be met.
They did not accept Mr Jacob’s submission that there was no need for his staff to have checked the age of the children because they were “regulars”, particularly given his admission at the hearing that the children on the footage did not look 25 years of age, and that a condition of the premises licence was for a Challenge 25 policy to be in place.
The panel also found that, as the designated premises supervisor, Mr Jacob had direct responsibilities to uphold the licensing objectives and had “lost all control over activities at the premises”.
The report concluded: “As a result, the only appropriate and proportionate step that the sub-committee members felt that they could take in order to uphold the licensing objectives of the prevention of crime and disorder and of the protection of children was to revoke the premises licence.”
The premises licence holder will have 21 days to appeal the decision to a Magistrates’ Court, should they choose.