'Flawed' law cost council £1,500 – claim

SDLP representative Martin Wilson has been informed that the fees for prosecuting two traders who admitted selling cigarettes to a 14-year-old boy totalled 1,521.50 after the court awarded costs totalling only 203 to the local authority.

Cllr Wilson claimed the council was out of pocket as a result of “flawed legislation” which the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety now plans to amend.

And the Larne town councillor has asked for a beakdown of the total cost to the council, including officer hours, of going to court.

Larne council has accepted the Department’s proposed introduction of fixed penalty notices for retailers caught selling to underage children. The fixed penalties would be issued by council enviroinmental health officers without having to resort to court action.

The draft legislation would also make it possible for local authorities to apply through the courts for orders up to 12 months prohibiting offenders from selling tobacco products. A breach of the order could mean a hefty fine and a prison sentence.

Members including Cllr Wilson and Ald Roy Beggs also expressed a need for more effort to be directed at the trade in counterfeit and illegal tobacco products.

The council was split last year over prosecutions arising from an exercise in which environmental health officers asked the teenager to try to buy cigarettes in a number of shops. Some members argued that the exercise was entrapment.

However, Director of Environmental Services at Smiley Buildings, Philip Thompson, has made it clear that the council has a duty to undertake a programme of enforcement action every 12 months.

“All retailers are aware that such test purchases are planned on a regular basis and those identified selling cigarettes to underage persons and who have not appropriate safeguards in place to establish a due diligence defence will be dealt with in accordance to the council’s enforcement policy,” he added.