Why do councils approve so many vape shops on the high street?

[JoyousOpalLemur]

Am I the only one completely baffled by this? I walked down my high street yesterday and another new vape (and sweets) shop has opened. There are now four vape shops that have opened in the last two years! They all seem to be permanently empty.

Why are councils granting planning permission for these shops?

One of the lead stories on the BBC last week was about how at least half of vape shops are linked to organised crime, particularly people and drug smuggling, and money laundering. Apparently many of the vapes they sell are also illegal and many sell tobacco to children.

It's not just the vape shops, three Turkish barbers have opened in the last decade (usually half empty), and three nail bars (to be fair, they tend to be quite busy) since Covid, which also have well known links to laundering the money made from people smuggling.

If councils are so keen on regeneration and local economies, why approve change-of-use for businesses that research shows are disproportionately tied to serious crime? Legitimate businesses are struggling, while these cash-heavy operations seem to get a free pass.

With also several young male Uber Eats riders parked down the high street, it doesn't feel a particularly safe space anymore.

Do councils even consider the crime angle when approving these applications, or is it just about filling empty units at any cost?

TIA for any insights or experiences.

Even though the shops are empty, the council are presumably getting whatever money is paid (I'm not very up on retail premises) in the equivalent of council tax, leases etc. So they don't really care what the shop is used for or how much footfall there is through the doors - as long as they are getting the monthly lease money in.

How can the Council force a business move back to old premises? They can’t just decide it shouldn’t have moved, there must be more to it than that.

I wonder how your council can do it when some other councils either can't or don't want to?

No!

Imagine how huge the planning department would be if the council had to approve every change of use of a shop

This is for the police and/or border force to enforce. This is why people come over on small boats. They know they will have to pay off the cost of the journey and will be illegally put to work to do it. If they know about it on the streets of Kabul it's surprising that it's taken a BBC investigation to uncover it! Everyone knows but the resources aren't there to do anything about it.

According to London Centric journalists in the newsletter I got this week ‘the biggest reason for the explosion in the number of dodgy shops in the capital is the collapse of high street tax enforcement.’

The same presumably applies up and down the country. London Centric reported on a panel session at Parliament last month - ‘Tax and duty non-compliance on high streets’ :

‘Witness Paul Monaghan, of the Fair Tax Foundation, told MPs that accountants and shop operators have clocked they usually won’t suffer any substantial punishment if they opt out of paying taxes. He said this realisation that paying taxes is optional is contributing to the state of local high streets:
“It’s so in-your-face, so pervasive, that at some point it’s going to weaken tax morale in this country.” ‘

It also mentions the fact that these ‘businesses’ are actually driving rents up. The scammers can afford higher rents because they have no intention of paying taxes, thus locking out legitimate traders.

That’s a bloody grim reality, and an even grimmer prospect. The government needs to get a grip on this, and FAST. This is actually a massive story that affects all of us, so I’m not sure why the mainstream newspapers aren’t on it more.

They can’t. There’s no legal basis for anything reported by that poster. Someone has misunderstood or misreported quite a lot about that situation.

I'm a local councillor and sit on the planning committee. There is no mechanism to stop someone leasing or buying a commercial premises/shop and selling vapes sadly. If there was I'd vote against a vape shop every time. Another council ( reform led) in a town near to our's has vowed to stop vape shops opening but they just don't have the power to do that. The only thing they can do is propose a policy not to lease shops in council owned premises to vape businesses. I'd be all for that but some would argue that it's tax payer owned property and that policy could lead to a reduction in rental income which could then lead to council tax having to be increased. Some residents would also be happier to see a Vape shop rather than an empty unit.

I have never known a councillor take a bribe to get a planning decision through and yet I've been accused and seen others accused of this many times on local Facebook when a planning application gets approved even though there was no legal planning reason to reject the application.

A lot of doctors and engineers need vape shops. Helps them be brainy. They get their hair cut a lot too.

You're confusing a few things. As others have noted vape shops don't need permission from the council as such. Councils do give permission for the use of a buildong, so if you want to rent out a unit as a shop it needs to be designated by the council as a retail unit, but once it gets that designated the council cannot control what retail is there - could be a clothes shop, vape shop or grocery etc...

Now there are other things thay can be enforced - trading standards have powers to enforce against things like floutung of age restrictions or selling goods not allowed in the UK etc.. and the police/HMRC can investigate money laundering/financial crime.

TL:DR councils don't have the powers to just "refuse" vape shops.

It’s class of use, you don’t licence individual shops so you can open a variety of businesses within that class (basically retail not take aways) if there was no business they will close (unless they are a front for crime but that’s a different topic!)

Agreed. I see accusations like this on Facebook when councillors make the only decision they could possibly have taken unless they wanted to spend a lot of money defending an appeal they could only lose.

If there is bribery and corruption it is mainly at the national level where big corporations exerted huge pressure /gave big donations to ensure the NPPF was exceedingly developer friendly

There appears to be a dodgy shop in Waterloo Station that I have never seen a customer in. A magical shop without customers. I'd love to know what money is paying the rent on that place.
The thing is that shop is presumably seen by many local police and government staff, who can see it's dodgy and could report it, but it still manages to exist.

So much bollocks like this is being posted these days. Councils do not determine how many shops of a certain type can be opened on a high street

You could actually google why every part of your assumption is wrong

Back handers?

There is a similar type of strict liability for drugs on premises. It’s a good idea.

It was phone accessory shops before that.

It is perfectly legal to sell vape related stuff. Given the lack of success of most high streets they probably just want the units filled.

Any criminal activity is for the police to deal with .

Some small towns have more barbers than GP surgeries. Maybe barbers could start doing minor surgery under local anaesthetic, which the vape shops could supply.

Council trading standards do work with police to carry out joint raids where there is illegality but it takes a lot of resource including a lot of travel outside the city to arrest those who run these shops. I also worry about safety after the Glasgow fire.

When I was in Istanbul last month I was hoping to see all the English barbers. Sadly not. Srangely, no Turkish ones either!

Have you reported it?

Literally just done it. Always mean to do it on the train and forget.

Doesn"t really work as a money laundering scam if there are 0.5 customers per shop per year, or am I missing something, don"t you need a high turnover customer intense business?
With the barbers, you can get a very decent head shaver for under £100, will probably last years, so the Jason Statham lookalikes don"t really need to go to a barbers and pay 15 to 20 quid for a haircut, they can pay for five haircuts up front and cut their own hair for the next five years or longer with probably no issues with the DIY cutter.
I think many barbers/vape shops are actually fronts for prostitutes and drugs, buy the drugs on the premises, get them handed to you in the change (they are all cash only) pay for the prostitute on the premises then go to a nearby address for the "service"? Most serious money laundering will be property/stock market/crypto?

From what I understand from money laundering, based entirely on Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul, you say you sold many times more than what you've actually sold, pay the tax on that, and then put the laundered money in the bank as it's now officially accounted for.

Many of these vape shops are chains owned by the same person or people at the top, who now have millions of pounds of 'clean' money even though they've sold next to nothing.