How the High Street became a window on our political instability
For several years, residents across Britain have expressed concerns about what they perceived as "dodgy shops" appearing on their High Streets. Many observed new businesses emerging that seemed to lack clear purpose or were operating amidst numerous direct competitors. Rumours circulated among neighbours about money-laundering mini-marts and vape stores controlled by gangs.
Despite this unease, it was challenging for ordinary residents to substantiate any wrongdoing.
When our investigation began in February, the full extent of the situation on High Streets was not immediately apparent.
Our BBC team has traveled throughout the UK—including Plymouth, Rochdale, Shrewsbury, Newport, and Bradford—uncovering what we found to be blatant criminal activities on the High Street.
In Hull, we discovered underground tunnels supplying sacks of illegal cigarettes to High Street mini-marts. In Swansea, police officers broke windows of "stash cars" used to conceal illegal cigarettes during the day and facilitate drug dealing at night. We also revealed a network of High Street shops selling illegal tobacco, operated by "ghost directors" concealing the true owners.
Freedom of Information requests disclosed for the first time that over 3,600 shops across the UK had illegal goods—such as counterfeit cigarettes, tobacco, and vapes—seized during 2024-25. Then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described some of our findings as a "disgrace." Throughout our reporting, we faced repeated attacks and threats.
In many locations, High Streets appear to have become fronts for organised crime. The National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates that at least £1 billion of criminal cash is laundered through UK High Street stores annually.
Barber shops have become the subject of debate
"People want to feel safe… [going] down the local High Street,"says John Herriman, chief executive of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute.
"The concern is that they don't feel as safe as they used to."
Each instance of High Street criminality causes local concern. However, when examining the national picture over the past year, a broader insight emerges. High Streets seem to reflect wider issues in British society, including stagnant income growth, inequality, and the rise of online shopping.
Some analysts suggest that visible criminality on the High Street is influencing politics, driving voters away from established parties toward political newcomers.
So how did this situation develop? And is there a solution for the decline of Britain's High Streets?
The psychological effect
Organised crime has long existed on the High Street, explains Elijah Glantz, a research fellow on organised crime at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a security think tank.
"Nail bars, pubs, certain restaurants - anything that's cash-intensive has always been vulnerable to organised crime exploiting it,"he says. Criminals prefer cash because, unlike card transactions or bank transfers, it is largely untraceable, making it useful for transactions and money laundering.
However, over the last decade, both the police and Trading Standards—a body enforcing consumer protection laws—have faced budget cuts. In 2002, Trading Standards employed 4,260 staff; by 2025, this number had dropped to 2,378. Since then, crime has become more visible.
"There does seem to be an increase in the visibility of it. We're looking at organised crime that has manifested because nobody has put it away, nobody has forced it underground,"says Glantz.
This brazenness has a significant psychological impact, particularly on politics.
Nick Plumb, a director at the Power to Change think tank, notes that the visible criminality on High Streets fuels feelings of "powerlessness," a potent force in UK politics.
"The sense of a lack of control… has been a key feature of our politics over the last decade,"he says.
"High Streets are incredibly important [to] how people feel about the country… and politics."
Beyond criminality, the issue of empty shops also concerns people.
Plumb's analysis showed that in the 2024 general election, support for Reform UK was higher in the 100 English constituencies with the largest increases in persistent High Street vacancies compared to the rest of the country. This finding is based on parliamentary seats they won or came second in. This builds on previous research from academics at Warwick, Oxford, and Imperial College London, which linked visible High Street decline to support for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Nigel Farage's earlier political party, between 2009 and 2019.
Plumb states that
"High Street decline is only partially explained by deprivation,"and points to factors such as
"the rise of online shopping and out-of-town retail, distant and uninterested ownership [and] changing working habits"as contributors to the decline.
Vape shops have become a High Street mainstay
Glantz from RUSI believes that as legitimate businesses close, criminal enterprises move in.
"Rents are down, there's a lot of empty spaces, so landlords are willing to pretty much take just about anybody,"he says.
Plumb coined the term "shuttered front" to describe constituencies with struggling High Streets that Power to Change believes could be pivotal in future elections.
Indeed, Reform's Nigel Farage and Richard Tice were among the first mainstream politicians to regularly address visible signs of High Street criminality.
In 2024, Farage stated at an event:
"You can see High Streets with five, six, seven barber shops in them."Tice added:
"Seriously, how come lots of these new barber shops have got no customers in them? How come they all want cash only? These are fronts for money laundering and drug money, and someone has to talk about it."
In a social media video last year that quickly gained attention, Robert Jenrick, then shadow justice minister, cited "weird Turkish barber shops" as a visible sign of decline, alongside bike theft, phone theft, and drugs in town centres.
"It's all chipping away at society,"he said. He later clarified that he was
"obviously not talking about all Turkish-style barber shops."Jenrick defected to Reform earlier this year.
Some politicians argue that language surrounding High Street decline risks becoming racially coded. In January, Miatta Fahnbulleh, then devolution, faith, and communities minister, agreed when asked by if the focus on Turkish barbers had racist overtones.
"Yes, I do. The fundamentals aren't to do with the colour of the skin of people running our High Streets. It's to do with long-term decline and neglect."
At that time, a Reform spokesman stated:
"This is not a matter of ethnicity.
The National Crime Agency itself has said many of these establishments are used as fronts for money laundering as well as a whole range of criminality which is why they carried out hundreds of raids on them last year."
Immigration—an issue consistently highlighted by voters and heavily campaigned on by Reform—also emerged in our investigation. We exposed a Kurdish gang facilitating illegal migrant labour in mini-marts across Britain by offering to put their own names on official paperwork. Trading Standards reported a steady supply of staff from asylum hotels, vulnerable to employer abuse, working in these shops.
Josh Nicholson, a researcher at the Centre for Social Justice think tank, comments:
"Chaos and flux in Westminster are reflected in our High Streets.
People feel powerlessness, they look at Westminster and see an inability of politicians to grapple with the basics and that feeds down to a local level."
This sense of helplessness was a recurring theme during our travels.
"Nothing is going to change,"Daniel from Swansea told us about the criminality on his High Street, which has become a hub for counterfeit rolling tobacco. He has witnessed violence and an increase in raids on High Street shops. A dual British and Chinese national, he considered moving to Hong Kong.
"It doesn't make me feel safe. I've got kids."
Economic hardship
Oscar Selby, who researches troubled High Streets at the Centre for Cities think tank, regards them as a "bellwether" for the broader economy.
"High streets are ultimately… downstream of the broader economy's performance,"he explains.
"The reason why people are so frustrated about High Streets is that people are also just annoyed that incomes have stagnated for the last 15 years. I think it all comes together in one package."
He views troubled High Streets as a "visual manifestation of the economic hardship that a lot of places feel."
High Street criminality highlights how physical stores have been impacted by the surge in online shopping, with footfall 15-20% lower after the Covid lockdowns, according to a 2024 study. Meanwhile, Amazon's net sales in the UK have doubled since 2020. This situation has been worsened by challenges in the commercial property market, affected by the shift to working from home and rising interest rates.
The picture is uneven across the country. Some town centres appear to be thriving, with little visible criminality, though the NCA found organised High Street crime gangs in every UK region during an operation last year. Research from the Centre for Cities identifies Cambridge, York, Edinburgh, and Manchester as relative success stories. However, this underscores another issue: inequality. Wealthier areas tend to experience less High Street crime, while struggling towns attract money-laundering gangs.
Amid calls for Sir Keir Starmer's resignation, Westminster is increasingly focused on the issue. Housing Secretary Steve Reed directly linked the state of High Streets to public trust in politics.
"Each of the last four prime ministers have been the most unpopular ever and the reason for that is the public are very angry about the state of the economy, very angry about the state of our public services and very angry about what they see around them when they look at their High Streets and their hometown,"Reed told the BBC.
The government has announced a new High Street organised crime unit, with a £30 million budget over three years. Approximately two-thirds will fund the NCA, supporting 75 officers, while the remainder will be allocated to Trading Standards and a small portion to tax and immigration authorities.
The initiative promises thousands of raids targeting rogue barber shops, vape stores, mini-marts, and sweet shops.
Glantz from RUSI believes the additional funding will have some impact and hopes the new NCA officers will thoroughly examine company documents to
"peel back the layers of ownership structures, which is very difficult to do."
He adds:
"If you get specialist investigators at the NCA to look, you will get a better threat picture and start to understand who is at the end of it."
However, he doubts that £30 million over three years compensates for long-term cuts to police and Trading Standards budgets. He notes that a few highly visible raids, if widely shared on social media, could have a deterrent effect.
"There hasn't been that visible community policing that might have in the past deterred these very obvious shops from springing up."
Strategic direction
For truly effective action, Glantz argues that authorities require enhanced powers.
Currently, Trading Standards typically rely on anti-social behaviour powers to close businesses, which involves extensive paperwork and a high threshold: it must be demonstrated that a business is a serious nuisance or that disorderly, offensive, or criminal behaviour is likely.
When permanent closures occur, they usually involve cooperation with landlords who evict tenants.
Trading Standards advocates for stronger, direct powers to swiftly close illegal shops and dismantle crime networks operating across multiple High Street premises, aiming to end the "whack-a-mole" problem where criminals relocate illegal goods to nearby shops.
Partly in response to the BBC's reporting, the government has commissioned a "rapid review" of local responders' powers, particularly considering whether Trading Standards should be able to close potentially criminal shops for longer than the current three-month period.
Herriman from the Chartered Trading Standards Institute believes that High Street organised crime was long viewed as a local issue rather than a national one, partly because Trading Standards activities are devolved to councils.
"Actually what it needs is some strategic direction from [national] government… because then you can start to coordinate across the country,"he says.
Regarding the newly announced funding, Herriman states it
"is not job done, it is just job started."
Perhaps the most significant lesson from our year-long investigation is that people still fundamentally care about their High Streets.
In the 1990s, out-of-town shopping centres were predicted to kill off High Streets; then it was online shopping, followed by working from home.
However, traveling the country revealed that High Streets retain a special place in public consciousness. This explains why visible criminality causes such distress.
One pensioner in Oldham urged us to continue our work, saying
"nobody cared."Richard, in northwest London, asked us desperately for advice on investigating gangs himself. And Errol, a Kurd from Turkey who had spent decades building his grocer's shop in Pill, south Wales, said he could no longer compete with gangs and was tempted to leave. He stayed mainly for his British-born children and grandchildren.
Now, it is the responsibility of the government and police to address these issues.
Additional reporting: Patrick Clahane and Rebecca Wearn
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