Council reaches £1 million milestone in Oxford Street Raids

Westminster City Council has now seized £1 million worth of illegal and counterfeit goods from US Candy Stores and Souvenir Shops on Oxford Street since started operations 15 months ago.

In the latest series of raids, officers in partnership with trading standards and the Metropolitan Police targeted two shops on Oxford Street confiscating a variety of items with a value of £145,000.

Almost 7000 items were collected as part of this round of enforcement some of which include:

• 2381 vape pens double the UK limit of nicotine and over 15 times over the legal tank size. These were originally hidden from officers to avoid detection but were recovered from five suitcases displayed on the shopfloor.

• 1723 counterfeit mobile phone cases.

• 1602 unsafe charging leads.

• 372 power banks with no safety labelling or UK company details.

• 273 unsafe travel adapters.

• 182 counterfeit EarPods sold at different price points depending on who the customer is.

After the surpassing the £1 million-mark, Cllr Adam Hug, leader of Westminster City Council said:

“Yesterday’s raid on US candy store & souvenir shops on Oxford Street is the latest in our ongoing operations to stop the sale of unsafe or illegal goods and means that over the past 15 months, we have now seized more than £1m in items from super strength vapes to designer fakes. That is an astonishing amount of fake and potentially dangerous items taken off the streets of the West End.

“We are dealing here with a sophisticated and determined rack that exploits UK legal loopholes to trade from shop lets. But these people now realise they are dealing with an equally determined council which will protect consumers with ongoing enforcement. We are also chasing £9m in unpaid business rates through the courts.

“However, as a local authority, we can only do so much. The biggest issue enabling unscrupulous traders is the fact they are usually run by shell companies with fictitious directors. There is a glaring lack of governance around setting up companies in the UK with only cursory checks on who the directors are – frankly, there are more checks involved if you want to get a local authority library lending card.

“We need the new Economic Crime Bill to help clamp down on these loopholes and to provide government agencies such as Companies House and HMRC with the powers and funding they need. As a council, we are doing all we can – but we need increased cross-government support to make life sour for the sweet shop racketeers.”

ENDS

Background information

• There has been a persistent problem of candy and poor-quality souvenir shops on Oxford Street and in the surrounding West End area, largely as a result of the pandemic

• Westminster City Council is currently chasing unpaid business rates of £9m by these stores. In recent weeks we have wound up three sweet shop operations for non-payment business rate and been paid £250,000 in business rates arrears by two other companies to avoid court action.

• Enforcing against these stores is difficult: often there are complex chains or leases, sub-leases, and licences in place with the final sub-leases / licences usually being highly questionable. The individuals occupying the properties on a day-to-day basis are also trained not to provide any information to Council officers when we visit the premises.

• Westminster City Council has written to freeholders urging them to consider the impact of US sweet shops on Oxford Street.

• The vast majority of the 29 current candy stores, souvenir shops, vape shops are being investigated for non-payment of business rates.

• We have consistently urged owners with voids to take advantage of initiatives like the West End Pop-up scheme, which has helped some landlords secure a reduction of 70% in the business rates liability through the application of a community rate for the Council's pop-ups (these allow start-up companies to use void shops)

Images of the raid available - contact fsheppard@westminster.gov.uk

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