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Home Underage sales

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Redbridge trading standards enforce the laws prohibiting the sale of age restricted items to underage children. This helps to prevent anti-social behaviour, minimises risks to health and improves the safety of the community.

How do we prevent underage sales?

We adopt a proactive approach to reduce illegal sales. We work with the police and licensing service to combat the illegal sale of age restricted products to young people by:

Advising businesses that want to comply with the law on how they can best avoid illegal sales
Maintaining a robust enforcement policy against those traders who flout their responsibilities
Investigating allegations on the sale of age-restricted goods to children, taking legal action when necessary

Test Purchases enable us to monitor whether traders are complying with the laws on underage sales.

How you can prevent underage sales

We recognise that it can be very difficult to assess a person’s age from their appearance. This is why you should always ask for proof of age if there is any doubt over the age of the purchaser.

You can avoid making underage sales by:

Adopting the 'Challenge 21' (or 25) policy
asking for acceptable forms of proof such as:

a passport
a photo-driving licence, or
a proof of age card bearing the PASS hologram, for example a Validate card or Citizencard

Providing resources for training staff
If you sell alcohol, produce a written age verification policy

Please check out our page on schemes to stop underage sales. Further information for traders on selling goods restricted products is provided by the Trading Standards Institute.

Report under-age sales to us

If you suspect that a local shop is selling age-restricted goods to children, contact us. We will investigate and, if necessary, arrange a properly supervised 'test purchase'. If you also require advice about the sale of restricted goods, please contact us on 020 8708 5716, or email us at community.safety@redbridge.gov.uk.

How you can help us

Trading Standards are looking for volunteers to help with such supervised 'test purchases' of age restricted products including alcohol and knives.

We need young people between 14 and 16 years old to attempt to purchase these goods from traders in Redbridge. The welfare of volunteers is paramount.

For further information please contact us on 020 8708 5716, or email us at community.safety@redbridge.gov.uk.