H&F Trading Standards seizes over £100,000 of illegal vapes

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November 17, 2025
3 min read

H&F Trading Standards seizes over £100,000 of illegal vapes

More than £100,000 worth of illegal and “potentially toxic and over-strength” vapes have been seized by H&F Trading Standards, as “seizures skyrocket” since 2021. The borough’s enforcement team has confiscated 12,263 “illicit vapes” with a total value of £106,236 since April 2021. The past seven months alone saw nearly £24,000 seized by Trading Standards officers. “It’s up to shopkeepers to comply with the law,” warned Doug Love from H&F Trading Standards.

On 1^st June, following a “huge rise in littering in parks and on pavements,” it became an offence to sell single-use disposable vapes. This was to protect the environment. But some shop owners have been “slow to make the switch” to only selling refillable and rechargeable vapes, even though a repeat offence can result in a two-year prison term.

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Courts are also able to shut down businesses for up to three months via closure orders if the sale is “deemed likely to cause antisocial behaviour.” Shops can also lose their premises licenses.

A series of national raids, codenamed Operation Machinize 2, targeted 2,700 shops over the past six months, resulting in 924 arrests and £10.7 million worth of illegal goods, including vapes and tobacco, being seized. It also led to 350 businesses being investigated by Companies House.

“Depriving criminals of their source of income has a real impact, limiting the amount of funds they can reinvest in further offending, and deterring them from taking spaces on our high street that could be used by legitimate businesses,” Rachael Herbert, director of the National Crime Agency’s economic crime unit, said.

Recycling group Material Focus calculated last year that 5,000,000 single-use vapes were thrown away every week in the UK. Many of them contained substances such as mercury and lead which pollute rivers and soil and can cause harm to wildlife.

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