Organised Crime: Retail Trade
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Home Office’s press release entitled New high street unit set up in nationwide blitz on dodgy shops, published on 19 May 2026, what estimate she has made of the amount of criminal proceeds laundered annually through high street businesses in the UK in each year since 2020.
Answered by Dan Jarvis
The National Crime Agency estimates that at least £1 billion is being laundered through rogue barber shops, vape stores, mini-marts and nail bars operating on UK high streets.
As such, addressing this threat is a priority for the Government, and on 19 May, the Government announced a £30 million crackdown targeting cash intensive business such as barber shops, vape stores, mini-marts and sweet shops operating on our high streets, over three years. This includes the following activities:
- £20 million in funding towards an enhanced law enforcement response, including establishing a new multi-agency coordination cell based in the National Crime Agency.
- Police officers will be uplifted across forces in hotspot regions. Altogether, 75 new police officers will be recruited across the NCA, Greater Manchester Police, West Midlands Police and a joint Kent Police and Essex Police Unit
- Trading Standards will also be backed with £6 million in new funding to bolster the response to sham businesses in at-risk local authorities. New officer training will be rolled out to identify suspicious businesses, strengthen business compliance and boost enforcement.
- A new cross government High Street Organised Crime Unit has also been established to bring together government departments, policing partners and Trading Standards. The Unit will be responsible for identifying what more is needed – from stronger powers to better co-ordination – to stop this criminal activity from happening in the first place. We have been working closely with National Trading Standards and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute to better understand the challenges Trading Standards face in tackling this problem.
The remainder of the funding is split between HMRC and immigration enforcement.
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