A CORNER shop in Hook has had its premises licence revoked after a series of licencing breaches.

The Premier Express store, in Station Road, Hook, had its premises licence revoked following a third offence of selling alcohol or tobacco to underage people and failure to comply with licencing conditions dating back to 2007.

The decision was made at a Hart District Council licencing sub-committee hearing on July 24. The convenience store was already on extra licence conditions following a sale of alcohol to a minor in March 2015, which meant alcohol could only be sold by the licence holder.

However, on April 20 this year, a test purchase had been carried out at the store and alcohol was sold to a sixteen year-old female volunteer by a member of staff that was not a licence holder.

According to the draft minutes of the hearing, David Dadds, the solicitor for licence holder Keyur Patel said Mr Patel lives above the premises and that he had gone upstairs to take a family meal and was away from the premises for 15 minutes when the alcohol was sold.

Mr Dadds added Mr Patel monitored the shop on CCTV via his mobile phone and left instructions to challenge anyone buying alcohol under the age of 25.

The meeting also heard how Mr Patel stated that the seller of the alcohol had indicated he thought the purchaser was six foot tall and looked the legal age.

However, when Paul Worrall, trading standards officer went into the shop after the sale of alcohol to the underage girl, Mr Patel told him there was no CCTV in the shop.

Trading Standards officers had also visited the shop on numerous occasions and advised Mr Patel to have CCTV systems in place, which Mr Patel has failed to install.

According to the draft minutes, since 2007, the corner shop has received complaints about the sale of tobacco and alcohol to minors, and has been blamed for the rise of anti-social behaviour in the area.

The minutes state at the hearing, Angela Semowo, licencing officer stated “effective steps to protect children from harm had not been successfully implemented.”

Mr Patel refused to comment when contacted.