A new £30m High Street organised crime unit has been announced by the government after the BBC's year-long investigative reporting into illegal mini-marts, vape shops. barbers.
Over 12 months BBC News exposed drug gangs, child sexual exploitation reports, money laundering, immigration crime. ghost directors linked to shop fronts selling illegal cigarettes and illegal vapes.
The law enforcement response will be run across the UK by the National Crime Agency (NCA) over the next three years - with a cash boost for trading standards.
The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) suggested cuts to its members' resources under previous governments had helped allow serious. organised crime to gain a foothold in High Streets.
The government has also pledged to carry out a review on how to strengthen law enforcement powers - as well as consulting on extending the length of closure orders to shut criminal businesses down for longer. an area the CTSI said needed to be changed.
Under the government plans:
The NCA estimates that at least £1bn of criminal cash is laundered through High Street stores in the UK each year through businesses connected to the sale of fake goods, tax evasion, illegal working. illegal drug supply.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: "We are hitting back with a nationwide crackdown to shut these fronts down, seize dirty cash. drive organised crime off our high streets and put bosses behind bars."
Proposals for the High Street organised crime unit - which will be overseen by Security Minister Dan Jarvis - were originally outlined in the 2025 Autumn Budget. the government has now released more details.
Jarvis told BBC News there would be thousands of raids on high streets across the country in the coming months. he was "confident we will see serious organised criminals imprisoned" and "millions of pounds of laundered money seized".
He added that the new collaboration between the NCA, trading standards, local police forces. HMRC would see much better targeting of enforcement around the country.
Over the course of 12 months, BBC News has gone undercover to expose the shocking reality of organised crime taking over our High Streets leading to an "urgent" Home Office investigation, multiple arrests across the country. pledges to change the law.
In April 2025 the BBC joined the NCA as it raided barbers, mini-marts. vape shopsin response to growing intelligence reports that some of these shops were being used for money laundering and illegal working.
In May. June of last year the team foundsecret underground tunnels supplying sacks of illegal cigarettes to High Street mini-marts in Hull,with authorities warning us that there was a "war" against organised crime that they couldn't win, with the profits from counterfeit tobacco now rivalling "heroin and cocaine" in a black market worth up to £6bn a year.
The then Immigration Minister, Seema Malhotra, described what the BBC had found as a "national scandal". the then-Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, later said it was a "disgrace".
In July, mass Freedom of Information requests revealed for the first time that3,700 illegal shops had operated across the UK.
In November last year, weexposed asylum seekers buying. selling High Street mini marts for cashand criminalkingpins erasing £60,000 illegal working fines,and exposed aKurdish organised crime gang operating on High Streetsthe length of Britain.
In response to our investigations, Mahmood launched an "urgent" investigation led by the NCA, Immigration Enforcement, HMRC. police forces from across the country. She said the BBC's evidence proved that "the system was broken". demonstrated a pull factor in the small boat crisis.
In March of this year a senior council worker repeatedly shared with West Midlands authoritiesreports of children as young as 11 being sexually abused in High Street mini-martsand last month undercover reports exposed howcocaine, cannabis, laughing gas. prescription pills were being offered for sale. One street we visited in the West Midlands was described as "lawless" by an anonymous law enforcement source.
In response, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the government was "absolutely focused" on tackling such criminality, pledging stronger powers. more police officers to do so.
The NCA said 950 people had been arrested. more than £10m worth of goods seized over the past 18 months and the new unit would help it target and disrupt more "high harm offenders".
Sal Melki, deputy director of illicit finance at the NCA, said: "This criminal activity makes our communities less safe. less prosperous.
"It undermines legitimate business, deprives public services of tax revenues,. fuels a range of predicate offences such as the drugs trade, illicit goods, trafficking, and organised immigration crime."
Lord Bichard. chairman of National Trading Standards, said the unit would "help drive a coordinated national response while strengthening local enforcement capability".
John Herriman, chief executive of the CTSI, told the BBC that cuts of about 50% had been made to trading standards resources between 2011. 2023.
He said there was a "sense" that the situation on High Streets "has been getting worse. worse for a number a years", adding: "That is pretty demoralising."
"This funding is the start of that fight-back process," he said.
Currently courts can order shops to be closed for three months. Herriman said the CTSI wanted new powers to be brought in to raise the limit to 12 months. with a complete ban possible for the worst offenders.
Security Minister Jarvis said the government is conducting an urgent review to see what more powers are necessary to ensure shops committing offences can be closed for a longer period of time.
Responding to the government plans. the Conservatives said Labour had "done more damage to our High Streets than 75 officers can fix".
Chris Philp MP, shadow home secretary, said there were fewer police officers as well as "anti-business legislation" under the government.
"Crime. antisocial behaviour are at unacceptably high levels, every day, too many people witness things that anger and alarm them," he said, adding a Tory government would aim to put extra police officers on the streets.
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