TAKE BACK CONTROL: Swansea demands power to block new vape shops after Mansel Street raids

Swansea Council is demanding the power to say no to new vape shops, days after raids on three Mansel Street stores ended with six people in custody and cocaine among the seizures.

Councillors backed the motion tabled by the Labour cabinet last week, telling the council leader and chief executive to write to the Welsh Government asking it to follow the UK Government in requiring new vape shops to seek explicit planning permission, in a retail category of their own that residents could object to.

Moving it, Cllr Andrea Harrington told the meeting she had walked through Morriston that day and counted seven barbers, five dedicated vape shops and nine takeaways.

She said the count covered only shops solely selling vapes, not those that also stock them, and takeaways with no seating inside. She also asked ministers to tackle the business rate exemptions vape shops benefit from, and pointed out that the planning guidance covering Welsh retail dates from November 2016.

What finally prompted the motion, she said, was watching trading standards close a business in her ward, only for it to reopen across the road the next day under a different name and landlord.

Seconding the motion, cabinet member for development Andrew Williams gave councillors an account of the scale of enforcement now involved. Three vape shops on Mansel Street were raided last Friday along with two homes, he said, with two vehicles seized and six people taken into custody.

The operation took eight trading standards officers, a housing officer, twelve police officers, six immigration officers, two dog handlers and a drone overhead, he said, and found illegal tobacco and vapes along with cocaine, cannabis and unidentified tablets.

“They’re just playing catch-up all the time,” he told the meeting, describing shops that close only to reappear in another area while intelligence is gathered afresh.

The debate went further than vapes. Cllr David Phillips, a former council leader and ex-customs officer, told the chamber he believed money laundering lay behind many of the shops appearing on the city’s high streets, describing vacant units taken on by “somebody with a suitcase full of money” and barbers whose prices, he said, made no commercial sense.

His argument tracks the National Crime Agency’s, whose officers visited or raided more than 2,700 barbers, vape shops and nail bars in a single month on the basis that cash businesses with few customers can be used as fronts.

Opposition leader Chris Holley argued the motion did not go far enough, pointing to free out-of-town parking and rateable values as the deeper problems, and asked for it to be referred back for a cross-party strategy.

Council leader Rob Stewart kept the motion alive by offering group leaders a hand in strengthening the letter to the Welsh Government instead, an offer Harrington welcomed.

In Uplands, she told the meeting, food and drink outlets already exceed the 50 per cent threshold yet thrive on footfall, which she said showed blanket policies fail and each high street needs local judgement.

Harrington pointed to what the alternative looks like. Dart Nation, the specialist darts shop that opened on Woodfield Street and now runs a junior darts academy, could have gone anywhere in Wales, she said, but chose Morriston, the kind of destination business she argued local control would make room for.

Whether Cardiff Bay moves is another matter. Asked last month whether Wales would follow England’s changes, a Welsh Government spokesperson said it would consider whether similar measures were required for vape shops when it next reviews the planning legislation on use classes.

The motion passed with no votes against, and the council’s letter will now be drawn up with input from all group leaders.