Stop and Shop, Vaporesso and Quick Stop must close for three months. That is nine premises the council has shut since November, two of them twice.

Three Ellesmere Port shops have been ordered to close for three months after repeatedly selling illegal tobacco, illegal vapes and age-restricted products to children. Cheshire West and Chester Council named the premises on 9 September:

  • Stop and Shop, Unit 3, 406 Chester Road, Little Sutton
  • Vaporesso, 46 Whitby Road, Ellesmere Port
  • Quick Stop, 17 Whitby Road, Ellesmere Port

Little Sutton is about two miles west of Whitby Road, on the A41 side of Ellesmere Port.

The orders followed enforcement visits to four premises in Ellesmere Port the week before, carried out with Cheshire Police’s Western Exploitation team. Officers seized nearly 20,000 cigarettes, more than 1.5kg of tobacco and more than 100 vapes. A specialist tobacco detection dog found several hidden compartments built to conceal the stock.

The applications were made by the council’s Trading Standards and Legal Services teams.

Nine premises, eleven orders, in ten months

The press release does not say so, but this is not an isolated raid. It is the latest round of a campaign that the council has been running since late 2025, and its own announcements set out the record.

Counting only the closures Cheshire West and Chester has announced, eleven closure orders have been granted against nine premises since November 2025. Two of those premises have been closed twice.

Closure orders secured by Cheshire West and Chester Council, November 2025 to September 2026 Eleven closure orders against nine premises: seven in Ellesmere Port, two in Northwich, one in Chester and one in Neston. Illegal tobacco closure orders announced by the council Dates as the council published them: the hearing date, or the start of the closure. 4 November 2025 Ellesmere Port Mini Market, 31 Marina Drive, and Local Express, 6 Thelwall Road 16 January 2026 Sakotis, 89 Brook Street, Chester, closed to 15 April 8 April 2026 A to Z Convenience Store, 27 High Street, Northwich, and Northwich Mini Market, Station Road 10 April 2026 31 Marina Drive and 6 Thelwall Road again, a second three-month closure for each 4 June 2026 King Vape Mini Market, High Street, Neston, closed to 3 September 9 September 2026 Stop and Shop, Little Sutton, and Vaporesso and Quick Stop, Whitby Road Three months each. The council did not publish the hearing date. By town: Ellesmere Port 7 orders, Northwich 2, Chester 1, Neston 1 Source: Cheshire West and Chester Council news releases, 5 Nov 2025 to 9 Sep 2026 Graphic by Chester Online

The list above may not be complete. When the council announced the closure of the Chester shop in January, it described that order as “our fourth such closure in recent months”, where its own releases to that point had named three. At least one order therefore appears not to have been announced separately.

Ellesmere Port accounts for seven of the eleven orders.

One of the Whitby Road addresses has been here before

Quick Stop occupies 17 Whitby Road. That address already appears in the council’s enforcement record. In October 2024 the council reported a prosecution over the business then trading at 17 Whitby Road as Easy Shop, following an inspection that found counterfeit cigarettes, cigarettes without English health warnings and illegal vapes, and a later visit at which a 14-year-old volunteer was sold an e-cigarette with no proof of age asked for. The vapes seized held nicotine liquid up to nine times the 2ml legal limit.

The council has not said whether the shop is under the same ownership now, and the closure order is against the premises rather than any individual.

What a closure order actually does

The council’s earlier releases name the power it uses: closure orders under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, granted by magistrates. The order attaches to the building. Once one is in force, anyone who enters or remains on the premises without reasonable excuse commits an offence, and can be jailed for up to 51 weeks, fined, or both.

That is why the same two Ellesmere Port shops could be closed a second time in April. Both had reopened after their first three-month orders expired, and test purchases found illegal tobacco on sale again.

The council also has a faster route that does not involve the courts. Since October 2023, Trading Standards officers can refer retailers directly to HMRC, which can impose civil penalties of up to £10,000, and retailers caught selling illegal tobacco can be removed from the Tobacco Track and Trace system, which locks them out of legal supply. The council reported in February that the UK-wide referral scheme had passed £1.4 million in penalties by early January.

Councillor Stuart Bingham, cabinet member for community safety and neighbourhood pride, said the shops “put our communities at risk and undermine responsible traders”, and that illegal tobacco and vapes “are often linked to wider criminality and can be sold without the safety checks and standards expected of legitimate products”.

What it means for you

The three shops must stay shut for three months. If you see one of them trading, that is an offence rather than a licensing dispute, and it is worth reporting.

  • To report illegal tobacco, illicit vapes or sales to children, call the Citizens Advice consumer service on 0808 223 1133. That is the route the council names in its release, and it passes reports to Trading Standards.
  • The products are the point, not the price. The cigarettes seized in the 2024 Ellesmere Port cases included stock with no English health warning and vapes carrying many times the legal nicotine limit.
  • If you want to stop smoking, the council and Brio Leisure run a free Go Smokefree service with 12 weeks of nicotine replacement therapy, on 0300 777 0033.

Two of the nine premises reopened and were caught again, so a closure is not the end of the matter. We will check the Whitby Road and Little Sutton addresses when these orders run out in December.

For other council enforcement in the borough, see our reports on the alley-gating orders now out for consultation and on the audit of the council’s own highways claims.

Sources: Cheshire West and Chester Council news releases of 9 September 2026, 8 June 2026, 14 April 2026, 27 January 2026, 17 February 2026, 5 November 2025 and 18 October 2024; section 86 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.