Half of all convenience stores and vape retailers ‘are linked to criminal gangs’: Map reveals UK’s ‘corridors of crime’ where highest number of shops act as fronts for illegal activity
Up to half of convenience stores and vape retailers in some areas of Britain are believed to have links with organised crime, Trading Standards revealed today.
Inspectors estimate that a third of American candy stores and one in four fast food takeaways in specific areas are suspected of being a front for criminal activity.
A hotspot map in the group’s Hidden In Plain Sight report found where organised crime on the high street is widespread and identified two ‘corridors of crime’.
One stretches from Liverpool on the west coast to Hull and Grimsby on the east coast; and the other covers south coast towns across Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex.
While hotspots are common in more populated areas, some can also be found in less obvious locations such as Great Yarmouth which may be linked to the tourist trade.
A survey found 97 per cent of Trading Standards officers are aware of suspected organised crime groups (OCGs) operating out of shops on their local high streets.
In an ‘almost universal recognition’, 99 per cent of officers told of an increase in the number of cash-intensive businesses opening on their local high streets since 2020.
And 72 per cent of Trading Standards professionals reported facing intimidatory behaviour or having been threatened with violence in the course of their duties.
Testimony shared with BBC News found one female officer was threatened with rape, while another was forced to watch pornography and a third was ‘poked in the breast’.
A third officer told how a suspect in a shop shouted ‘I kill you, I kill you’, while others recounted finding weapons in shops such as axes, bats, blades and hammers.
There were also attacks to officers’ cars and property as trackers were put on their vehicles and they were apparently followed at work.
One officer said a Kurdish crime gang selling illegal cigarettes and nitrous oxide canisters across the UK threatened to kill her and burn her house down.
Trading Standards has published a map of high streets across the UK for so-called dodgy shops, along with the ten towns and cities perceived by its officers to be hot spots for OCGs, with Birmingham, Liverpool and London filling the top three spots.
It said the budgets of Local Authority Trading Standards (LATS) services had been cut by up to 50 per cent over the last decade, with staffing stripped to minimum levels.
[…]
These shops often brought with them associated criminality including anti-social behaviour, theft and violent crime, drug supply, modern slavery, and child sexual exploitation.
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