A Weymouth business has been accused of criminality and paying inadequate attention to selling tobacco products to children.

A Trading Standards prosecution against the King Street business is ongoing after what is claimed to be the department’s biggest seizure of cigarettes and tobacco products from the premises.

The business, originally known as The Polish Deli, but now trading as Weymouth Market, is currently without a Premises Licence to sell alcohol after the owners failed to pay the annual licence fee and no longer have a Designated Premises Supervisor.

No one from the company appeared before a hearing in Dorchester today to answer a Dorset Police request to revoke the Premises Licence.

A police licensing officer told the hearing that when she visited, to serve the paperwork for the hearing, the shop was not selling alcohol.

Three joint visits to the business by Trading Standards, HMRC and the police, have found what is claimed to be products which are either illegal to sell, or appear to have been sold, or stored, without UK tax duty being paid.

Test purchases in February 2023 when tobacco products were sold to children led to another visit by the police and trading standards officers in February 2023 when 12,500 packs of cigarettes were seized along with 100kg of hand rolling tobacco and over 1,000 illegal vapes, as well as nitrous oxide cannisters, commonly known as ‘laughing gas.

Police licensing officer Kirsty Gatehouse told the panel meeting in Dorchester that after one official visit last year, where goods were seized, on each subsequent visit larger quantities of goods were taken away.

She told the panel of councillors: “The main reason for submitting this (request to revoke the Premises Licence) is because of the criminality we have witnessed in that shop…we are not convinced at all that this shop is being well run,” she said.

Ms Gatehouse said that if the drinks licence were retained there was a fear that alcohol could also be sold the children, given the results of test purchases of tobacco products by children.

“I don’t think they’ve any regard for age verification for anything that they’re selling. It's a concern for us that children could easily obtain alcohol…we just don’t want this kind of criminality getting any worse.”

In response to questioning she said that boxes and packaging found on the premises appeared to indicate they had been “imported secretly, or behind the scenes, rather than an official delivery,” but added that those matters were now in the hands of Trading Standards and HMRC.

A Dorset Police statement said that its officers and other partner agencies were working tirelessly to tackle the problem of illegal goods.

“It is the view of Dorset Police that this type of activity should not be condoned, and further similar operations are planned for the future throughout Dorset.”