Man's mission to crack down on crooked corner shops

A former Royal Marine became so fed up with suspicious activity at his corner shops he launched his own mission to crack down on the illegal activity.

John Bolton, who has lived in Taunton, Somerset, for more than 40 years, started taking photographs of incidents at his nearby stores and then handed them to police.

The shops, all within a few hundred metres of each other, were later shut by police and trading standards after illegal tobacco, vapes and counterfeit goods were found.

Bolton said: "There was something going on. Everyone knew it was wrong. You could sense it just wasn't right."

"It's actually becoming a dump this end of town. It's upsetting but it's happening all over the country," he added.

Following the shops' closure, Gideon Amos, the town's MP, has called for police forces to be handed stronger powers to shut down stores selling illegal goods.

Taunton Market and Top Market, located opposite each other on Station Road, were closed in December last year after the photographs resulted in police discovering illegal tobacco and vapes worth £50,000 on their premises.

Convenience store Mr Taunton on nearby Bridge Street was also issued with a three-month closure order in March for selling non-compliant vapes, illegal tobacco and counterfeit goods.

Wiltshire Police has urged other residents to report suspicious behaviour in their area.

It comes after a BBC investigation into drug gangs and child sexual exploitation gangs were linked to shop fronts selling illegal cigarettes and illegal vapes.

Amos said he wants police forces to be able to close such shops without having to go to court.

He said: "Behind too many illegal shops are complicit landlords cashing in on the rent from illegal activity, and right now they face no consequences at all.

"I want to address their frustration with the reality of tackling illegal sales at one end of the counter while trading continues at the other end of the counter."

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the government was hitting back with a nationwide crackdown to "shut these fronts down, seize dirty cash and drive organised crime off our high streets and put bosses behind bars".

The wider law enforcement response will be run across the UK by the National Crime Agency (NCA) over the next three years - and includes £6m for trading standards.

The unit will be overseen by Security Minister Dan Jarvis who said there would be thousands of raids on high streets across the country in the coming months and he was "confident we will see serious organised criminals imprisoned" and "millions of pounds of laundered money seized".

PC Isabella Fitzgerald, from the Taunton neighbourhood policing team, said after the closure of Mr Taunton: "The impact on the community arising from the unlawful sale of these products cannot be overstated."

Ch Insp Becky Wells-Cole said it is believed that there are criminal networks behind lots of [the shops we shut down]… We look to disrupt the ones that we are aware of."

Wells-Cole added: "We in neighbourhood policing look to disrupt the ones that we are aware of and look at how we can intervene and make the town safer for the communities here."

A spokesperson for Heart of the South West Trading Standards Service, which covers Somerset and Devon, said it has closed 30 shops in the past year, adding that a number of them were in Taunton.

They said: "Shutting down illegal tobacco traders is a priority for us.

"Low-cost illegal tobacco makes these products more accessible to children and helps fund organised crime. We are taking action to stop it.

"Criminals are using increasingly sophisticated hiding places, but with trained detection dogs that can sniff out even small quantities, along with intelligence-led enforcement, we are successfully targeting offenders."

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