Wood Green off licence caught selling wine to underage teen

A shop is having its licence to sell alcohol reviewed after a 16-year-old was sold wine and illegal tobacco worth £1,600 was discovered on the premises.

Oz Sultan, in High Road, Wood Green, could have its licence suspended, modified or revoked as a result of the incidents, which took place last year.

Haringey Council’s licensing subcommittee will decide what action to take after hearing evidence during a meeting on Thursday.

The authority’s trading standards department recommended suspending the licence, citing concerns over the prevention of crime and disorder and the protection of children from harm.

It came after a 16-year-old was sold wine during a test purchase exercise in August last year. Two months later, non-duty paid cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco were found on the premises.

Mike Squire, a council trading standards officer, told the licensing meeting a safe discovered in the shop was “fully stocked with tobacco products”, which were illegal because they were not duty-paid or in standardised packaging.

He added that the value of the tobacco was “in the region of £1,600”, with 4,580 cigarettes and “over a kilo of hand-rolling tobacco”.

Mike said that when interviewed, licence holder Turac Aydemir said his brother Mehmet had effectively been running a side businesses while he was on holiday.

Trading standards were recommending “a period of suspension”, Mike added, as a result of the high value of tobacco seized and the fact that they were “misled in terms of access to the safe”. After trading standards were initially not given a code to the safe and were told that it was broken, they had to remove it from the shop to examine the goods.

Robert Sutherland, a solicitor representing the licence holder, said he believed modifying the licence would be “proportionate and appropriate”.

He told the meeting: “Any suspension of the licence for any period will substantially affect the business, purely because it is very reliant upon alcohol sales.”

Robert said both issues arose due to the actions of Mehmet Aydemir, who had apologised and attributed the incidents to a “one-off bad phase”. The solicitor added that when Turac returned from his holiday, he had provided the code to the safe and made it clear that Mehmet’s behaviour was unacceptable.

To address the problems, trading standards and the licence holder have agreed a range of conditions, including a ‘Challenge 25’ policy, regular staff training, CCTV cameras, and sales and refusals registers. In addition, Mehmet will not be allowed to work at the shop unsupervised.

Robert suggested that any suspension of the licence should last two to three weeks, as many of the conditions had already been implemented.

The licensing subcommittee will issue its decision, which is subject to appeal, within five working days.

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Oz Sultan sold illegal tobacco to the 16-year-old, whereas this was found on the premises at a later date.