Shop banned from selling knives after one sold to youth
A West Midlands shop has been banned from selling knives after a licensing review by police officers in the town.
In the first successful ruling of its type in the West Midlands, the Premier store in Bosworth Drive in Chelmsley Wood has had its licence conditions changed so it can no longer sell knives.
This is after a test purchase carried out by the Trading Standards team in October when a knife was sold to a juvenile test buyer.
After the operation, the Licensing team supported an application to review the shop's licence.
The licensing panel agreed and the shop is now not allowed to stock knives under ‘the prevention of crime and disorder’ licensing objective.
The new conditions of the licence mean CCTV must be installed and operational at all times and at least one member of staff must be trained to operate it and download images upon request.
Training must be provided to all staff around checking ages through Challenge 25 and keeping an incident book in which refusals to sell are logged.
The Licensing team's argument was that while knives aren't illegal to sell, if the applicant had disclosed they wanted to sell knives at the point of application, the team would have objected to the licence.
They also argued that the store should not be allowed to sell drugs paraphernalia and nitrous oxide canisters (under the prevention of public nuisance licensing objective).
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: "The shop was not selling nitrous oxide canisters, but this action was taken as a preventative measure along with the knife selling.
"It was felt that action needed to be taken to prevent items commonly linked to crime and anti-social behaviour from being readily available.
"There are obvious risks associated with selling knives, making crime and anti-social behaviour more likely where they are sold.
"This is the first time a shop has had its licence changed in this way in the West Midlands.
"No other premises has previously had this type of condition applied to their licence that forbids them from selling knives, cannabis paraphernalia and nitrous oxide canisters."
