Testing and seizing vapes for compliance with United Kingdom laws - Find a freedom of information request

Request

1) How much money has been spent in the last three calendar years (2020, 2021,2022,2023 so far, please state the month you have gone up to) on testing vapes for compliance with UK laws? Please break this down by year and say the company you used for compliance testing if you can.

2) How many illegal vapes have been seized by trading standards in the last three calendar years (2020, 2021,2022,2023 so far, please state the month you have gone up to)? Please break this information down by year.

Decision

1) The below figures relate to the cost of testing vapes for compliance. Please note this relates to the costs for an analyst to test for compliance. All testing related to electrical screening tests, not nicotine/chemical testing.

Figures below exclude the costs of test purchasing vapes. The majority of vapes Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) has seized are internally analysed by LCC, i.e. a visual check of labelling and packaging to check for non compliance. There is no associated cost to this.

• 2020 – £0

• 2021 – £0

• 2022 – £1494, excluding VAT. Testing was undertaken by Consumer Product Assessment Services Limited.

• 2023 (up to the end of May 2023) £0

2) Number of vapes seized – we only started recording vape seizures in April 2022

• 2020 – 0

• 2021 – 0

• 2022 – 5062

• 2023 (up to the end of May 2023) – 4393

Reference number
6824857
Date request received
15 May 2023
Date of decision
13 June 2023