High Street store ordered to close after raids formally shut by officers

Trading Standards officers temporarily closed down a High Street store in Wiltshire after illegal goods were seized.

Smoke City in Calne High Street was raided by police and Wiltshire Council’s Trading Standards team in December.

Following the confiscation of several illicit tobacco and vaping goods, the store was issued a three-month closure order by Swindon Magistrates Court on Friday, January 24.

Later that day, Trading Standards authorities came to the location to formally advertise the closure notice.

Under the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act of 2014, this order forbids anyone other than habitual inhabitants or permitted personnel from entering the premises for the following three months.
Anyone discovered to have violated these limits may risk a fine or perhaps imprisonment.

During last month’s raids, 92 non-compliant vapes, 345 packages of cigarettes, and 87 pouches of hand rolling tobacco were seized and discovered to be illegal.

A backpack containing £3055 in cash was also seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Smoke City is the sixth business to be temporarily shuttered by Wiltshire Trading Standards in the last six months, following similar orders issued for stores in Chippenham, Melksham, Devizes, and Salisbury.