HIGH STREETS: What Andy Burnham’s vape and betting shop crackdown means in Wales

A Westminster crackdown on vape and betting shops making national headlines today will only partly apply in Wales.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced the measures as a plan to save “hollowed out” high streets, promising local people a real say over what opens in their town centres.

But planning is devolved to the Senedd, and the Wales Office says just two of the measures apply here: a change in the law to make it easier for councils to block betting shops, and longer closures of premises suspected of links to crime or anti-social behaviour.

On betting shops, the UK Government intends to revoke the Gambling Act’s “aim to permit” rule, which currently restricts councils’ ability to refuse new betting shops and 24-hour slot machine venues even where there are strong local concerns.

The change lands as a dozen betting shops across south west Wales wait to learn their fate, with Betfred yet to say which of its 132 closing branches are local ones.

The maximum length of closure orders will also double from six to 12 months, giving police and councils more time to investigate premises linked to organised crime and stop rogue businesses reopening before investigations finish.

Those are powers of the kind used repeatedly in Swansea, where Trading Standards has shut illegal vape sellers again and again, including one Pontarddulais shop closed three times in under a year, in a city recently ranked fifth in the UK for illegal vape seizures.

The rest of the package stops at the border. Requiring planning permission for vape shops, stopping them opening near schools, tightening the definition of a vape shop, bringing adult gaming centres into the planning system and the drive on shopfront design all apply in England only.

That means a new vape shop in Wales can still open without planning permission, under the same rules as a coffee shop, unless Welsh ministers bring in equivalent requirements of their own.

In response, the Welsh Government said betting shops in Wales already sit in their own planning use class, “allowing planning authorities to apply local development plan policies to suit local circumstances”.

“We will consider whether similar measures are required for vape shops when we next review the planning legislation relating to use classes,” a spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said the Welsh Government was providing more than £650,000 to Trading Standards Wales to stop illegal vape and tobacco products being sold, and bringing into force measures in the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 to strengthen enforcement, including on-the-spot fines for those who break the law.

Details of a Town Centre Taskforce will also be announced shortly, offering practical advice on regenerating town centres across Wales, with its work focused on challenging decline, increasing footfall and attracting investment.

Secretary of State for Wales Stephen Kinnock welcomed the changes that do reach Wales. “The people of Wales deserve more from their high streets than betting shops and fronts for crime or anti-social behaviour,” he said.

“I’m very pleased to see Andy Burnham’s UK Government taking action to change the law to give local people and police more powers.”

Mr Burnham said high streets had been “hollowed out and become unrecognisable over decades of decline”, with vape shops, betting shops and rogue operators replacing “the shops, services, and community spaces that people are crying out for”.

Housing and Communities Secretary Angela Rayner said people knew when their high street was not working for them, and that councils would get “the power to say no to what doesn’t belong on their high street, and the tools to fix it themselves”.

Analysis by the Centre for Social Justice, cited by the government, found Britain has lost nearly 1,800 pubs and bars since 2016 while vape and tobacco shops grew to almost 2,200, with gambling premises clustering particularly in more deprived areas.

The measures sit alongside a £30m crackdown on money laundering, tax evasion and illegal working in rogue businesses, with the planning changes for adult gaming centres in England due to take effect at the start of next year.