Annual Activity and Spending Tobacco

1. Please provide a breakdown of the council's annual activity and spending in each of the past five years on activities to combat the illicit tobacco market. This can include but is not limited to, inspecting businesses, investigating reports of illicit sales, and seizing illegal products.


The draft Tobacco and Vapes Bill suggests that councils will likely be responsible for overseeing the issuance and enforcement of licenses for tobacco retailers, similar to alcohol licensing.


2. What discussions or plans has the council (and relevant departments) had about how it will resource, fund, and staff the implementation of this new licensing system?

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.  
 
1. There is no overall central budget that captures all spend on activities relating to our work concerning the illicit tobacco market.  Whilst some elements can be costed, capturing costs for all activities including such things as officer time (accounting for a large proportion of spend), mileage, etc cannot be done.  

Lincolnshire Trading Standards has a dedicated Tobacco, Vapes and Product Safety Team.  The activity of the team in terms of illicit tobacco would include, but is not limited to, inspections, test purchasing (illicit tobacco and underage sales), multi-agency days of action, investigations and prosecutions, closure orders, investigating complaints, creating and sharing intelligence, preventative work with businesses and partners such as Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue, social media work to raise awareness with businesses and consumers to encourage reporting, etc.  A number of published FOI results are available on Lincolnshire County Councils website, detailing the number of illicit tobacco products seized, closure orders issued, prosecutions.

2. Further details are awaited from the Government on how the new licensing scheme will work.  The scheme design has not yet been consulted on.  Licensing authorities in Lincolnshire are the seven district councils, with Trading Standards a responsible authority to be consulted on and for alcohol licenses under the Licensing Act 2003.  This allows us to make representations to a local licensing authority regarding the granting of premise licenses.  We await further details of the new licensing scheme for tobacco, to be able to fully understand resource implications.  In terms of enforcement and the issuing of penalties, again we await further details of the scheme.