A shop has lost its licence after a sniffer dog found illegal cigarettes hidden in a toilet.

Enfield Food Store in Hertford Road, Ponders End, had its licence revoked on Wednesday, April 20 by Enfield Council – the third time it has lost its licence. 

Licensing enforcement officers visited the store on December 21, and found more than 4,500 packets of untaxed cigarettes and 35 packets of hand-rolling tobacco, many of them discovered in a toilet area behind two fake walls and a locked metal door. 

Cabinet member for environment, Cllr Daniel Anderson, said they estimated the store had been evading nearly £25,000 in tax.

He said: “This was tax evasion on an industrial scale, the lengths that the premises owners went to conceal this tobacco shows that they knew what they were doing was illegal. 

“This is one of the biggest seizures of tobacco ever made from an off-licence in Enfield.

“The premises owners repeatedly showed a flagrant disregard for the law and actively worked to undermine our efforts to licence premises in the borough. 

“The time and effort that must have gone into building the various storage containers in which items have been concealed shows that this is obviously a large-scale operation taken very seriously.”