Putney corner shop set to lose licence for underage alcohol sales

A Putney corner shop may lose its licence next week after it was caught repeatedly selling alcohol to children.

Licensing officer have asked for the licence for Stonehenge Food and Wine at 7 Lower Richmond Road to be revoked following a fourth visit this week – just days before a hearing that will decide the shop’s future – and found it still breaking the conditions of its licence. Among the drink on sale was the same 7.5 per cent Guinness Foreign Extra Stout the shop had sold to a 16-year-old in April.

“Considering the persistent non-compliance identified during inspections on 22 April 2026, 30 June 2026, and 25 August 2026,” a letter says, “the Licensing Authority will be seeking the REVOCATION of the Premises Licence.”

Three councillors will decide next Thursday: they can do nothing, change the conditions, suspend the licence for up to three months, or take it away. The hearing starts at 7pm, is held online, and anyone can watch live.

The shop sits on the corner of Lower Richmond Road and the High Street, overlooking the river. It sells groceries, and was granted a licence to sell alcohol, despite objections, last year. In April and again in June, Trading Standards sent in teenage volunteers, and both times it sold them beer without asking a question.

The licence changed hands. The man responsible did not

Thirteen days after the first failed test purchase, the shop’s licence was transferred to a new holder. Abdul Hamid Hamidi took it over on 30 April and the shop began trading under a new name. The licence number stayed the same. So did the permitted hours.

So did the person legally responsible for alcohol sales. Every licensed premises has to name someone as its Designated Premises Supervisor, the person answerable day to day for what is sold and to whom. That was Naeem Sadegi, who had applied for the licence in the first place. After the transfer it was still Naeem Sadegi. He also kept the personal licence that allows him to authorise alcohol sales, issued by Camden Council, and he holds the lease on the shop.

The council’s own application for the review puts it plainly. “While the Premises Licence has transferred from Mr Naeem Sadegi to Mr Abdul Hamid Hamidi, there has not been a complete separation from the original applicant.”

That is the question in front of the sub-committee next week, underneath the two sales. Not whether the shop broke the rules, which the council’s evidence says twice over that it did. Whether a change of name on a licence means anything at all about who is running a shop.

April: a bottle of stout, then a warning

Ranjeev Sohal, a senior fair trading officer, has set out what happened in a witness statement made on oath.

On 17 April he went into the shop, followed by the 16-year-old volunteer. The boy picked up a bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, took it to the counter and put it down. The salesperson sold it to him and asked for the money. In Sohal’s words, he “did not ask for any ID or have any further interaction with the volunteer.”

The stout is 7.5 per cent alcohol. The shop’s licence forbids selling any single beer, lager or cider above 6 per cent. So the sale broke two things at once: the law on selling alcohol to children, and a written condition of the licence.

Sohal and another officer went back in and spoke to the man who had made the sale. He would not give his name. Instead, the statement says, “he produced a Personal Licence ID of another person called Naeem Sadegi issued from Camden.”

There were no Challenge 25 notices anywhere in the shop, no book recording refused sales, and the premises licence itself was not on display.

Second occasion

Five days later a licensing officer, John McGann, inspected the shop at noon. He had gone in following complaints that the premises was trading beyond its permitted hours for alcohol and selling alcohol to children. He found breaches of six separate groups of conditions.

Nobody on duty could operate the CCTV, and the signs saying it was running were missing. The incident log could not be produced. Nor could the staff training records. There were no Challenge 25 signs, no notices about selling alcohol to children, no refusals register and no working age-check prompt at the till. There were no notices asking customers to leave quietly.

And in the beer fridge, on display and for sale, were 500ml cans of Carlsberg Danish Special Brew at 7.5 per cent, the same condition the stout had broken.

During that visit officers established that the shop was already being run by Abdul Hamidi, who was there and told them he was applying for a personal licence and intended to apply to take over the premises licence and change the supervisor.

McGann issued a formal warning. It told Sadegi that selling alcohol to a child and breaching licence conditions are criminal offences carrying up to six months in prison, an unlimited fine, or both. It set out the law on persistent sales: two or more sales of alcohol to children at the same premises within three consecutive months, which allows the council to prosecute, close the shop or apply to review its licence. It said a follow-up inspection would happen within two weeks and a further test purchase would be arranged.

“Given the failed alcohol test purchase already identified,” the letter said, “this matter will be monitored closely.”

Trading Standards had already emailed Sadegi on 20 April asking him to come in and discuss what had happened. He did not reply. On 13 May they wrote to him instead, setting out in writing the advice they would have given him in person: train the staff, keep the records, run Challenge 25 properly, maintain a refusals book. The letter told him his silence had been noticed and would be recorded formally, and that as supervisor and licence holder he carried personal legal responsibility for the conditions at all times. “It is not sufficient to delegate this responsibility without adequate oversight and supervision.”

He did not reply to that either.

June: a bottle of lager, and nothing fixed

On 24 June, Sohal went back with a Trading Standards apprentice and a 17-year-old volunteer.

The boy came out of the shop with a bottle of Peroni. The two officers went back inside and spoke to the salesperson, who agreed he had sold it, completed a visit report, handed over a notice of powers and rights, and left at about ten past twelve.

Six days later the licensing officer inspected again. The CCTV problems were still there. So were the missing Challenge 25 measures, the missing refusals records, the missing training records, the missing incident logs and the high-strength single cans. A second formal warning was issued.

On 6 July, John McGann signed an application to review the licence. His conclusion was that the failures “are not isolated incidents but are systemic and ongoing,” and that the repeated sale of alcohol to children showed the systems meant to protect them were “either ineffective or not being implemented.” He invites the council’s licensing sub-committee to consider whether revoking the licence was the only appropriate and proportionate response.

The councillors who granted the licence in the first place had worried about something very like this. On 8 July 2025 the sub-committee heard Sadegi’s application against objections from the Metropolitan Police, Trading Standards and two residents. The police and Trading Standards withdrew once conditions were agreed. The two residents did not, and the case went to a hearing.

Sadegi told the councillors he was opening a Middle Eastern and Lebanese-style convenience store, with fruit and vegetables at the heart of it and alcohol a sideline. He gave assurances about staff training, Challenge 25, CCTV and talking to neighbours.

The councillors granted the licence, but cut the hours he had asked for. They would not let him start selling alcohol at eight in the morning, because sales at that hour could undermine the protection of children during school travel times. And because he had never run his own licensed premises before, they took an hour off Friday and Saturday nights. Both of those precautions were about the risk that later materialised.

Tuesday: still on the shelves

The council published its case against the shop on 20 August, thirteen days before the hearing. Five days after that, at half past four on Tuesday afternoon, John McGann went back in.

The premises licence was not being kept at the shop. The summary licence was not on display. The incident log could not be produced. Neither could the staff training records. There were still no notices asking customers to leave quietly.

And the beer fridge and the shelf behind the counter still held single bottles and cans above 6 per cent: Carlsberg Danish Special Brew at 7.5 per cent, Original Jamaican Dragon Stout at 7.5 per cent, and Guinness Foreign Extra Stout at 7.5 per cent, which is the drink a 16-year-old had walked out with four months earlier.

There was something new as well. Condition 9 also bars the shop from selling spirits in bottles smaller than 20cl. McGann counted 52 miniatures on display for sale, all of them 5cl: bourbon, vodka, Southern Comfort, a peanut butter whiskey and a cinnamon liqueur.

He wrote the next day. He was “particularly concerned” that the breaches found in April and June were still there, he said, and the miniatures were a new failure on top of them. Despite two previous warning letters, he wrote, “significant breaches of the premises licence conditions continue to be identified.

“I am extremely concerned that there has been little or no evidence of improvement since the previous inspections.”

That letter went to Abdul Hamid Hamidi. It is the first of the three to be addressed to him. The two before it went to Naeem Sadegi.

What happens on Thursday

Two residents have written to the council; both support the licence review.

Waqar Abbasi, who runs a business nearby, asked the sub-committee to revoke the licence. He says he has raised concerns with the council over a long period, and that he has personally seen the shop trading late into the night, often until three in the morning, drawing noise and antisocial behaviour. His worry, he wrote, is that the problems “should not simply continue under a different operator.”

Alex Peters lives a few doors away and objected when the licence was first granted, warning then about the risk of underage sales. “Although the licence was subsequently granted with conditions,” he wrote, “the recent enforcement action demonstrates that many of those concerns have unfortunately materialised.” He says he has seen alcohol sold after the permitted hours on numerous occasions, sometimes hours after the shop was supposed to have shut. He asked the committee to consider revoking the licence.

Neither Hamidi nor Sadegi have said anything on the record. The council’s report says copies of all the representations were sent to them. Both will be able to put their case at the hearing.

Nothing about the outcome is settled. Three other Wandsworth premises have been through a licence review in the past 18 months: the committee took a licence away from a Tooting corner shop over CCTV of suspected stolen goods bought across the counter. It let another shop keep its licence after findings just as serious. And in April it let a Roehampton pub keep its licence, with four new conditions attached.

This shop was told in writing, three times, exactly what it had to fix. Some London boroughs work the other way round. Barking and Dagenham publishes the result of every test-purchase operation it runs, naming how many shops were tested and how many failed, and it runs a voluntary Responsible Retailer Scheme that more than 100 local businesses have joined. Its three core commitments are a Challenge 25 policy, signed staff training records and a dated refusals log: the three things officers could not find at 7 Lower Richmond Road on any of their three visits.

The hearing is on Thursday 3 September at 7pm, held online via Microsoft Teams, and the council webcasts it live.

How to have a say on a licence near you

Watch this hearing. The Licensing Sub-Committee meets on Thursday 3 September at 7pm, online via Microsoft Teams. Wandsworth webcasts it live at wandsworth.public-i.tv. The council warns on the agenda that the sub-committee may be asked to pass a resolution excluding press and public for part or all of the proceedings.

Object to a licence application. You have 28 days from the council receiving an application to make what the law calls a representation. Ten days for a minor variation. It has to be in writing, it has to give your grounds, and it has to carry your name and full postal address: anonymous objections are not accepted. Email licensing@merton.gov.uk, which handles licensing for Wandsworth, Merton and Richmond. Note that emailed representations are passed to the applicant in full, so if you do not want your email address disclosed, send yours as an attachment. Your objection has to be about one of the four licensing objectives: crime and disorder, public safety, public nuisance, or protecting children from harm. Competition and local need are not grounds the council can consider.

Ask for an existing licence to be reviewed. Anyone can, not just the council. Use the review application form on the council’s website, send the original to the licensing authority, and on the same day send a copy carrying your name and address to the licence holder and to each of the eight responsible authorities. Miss any of them and the application is invalid. The council then advertises it, allows 28 days for comments, and must start a hearing within twenty working days of the last date for representations, with at least ten working days’ notice.

Report a problem at a licensed shop or pub. Breach of licence conditions: report a licensing matter through the council’s online form. Suspected underage sales: use the consumer complaint form linked from the council’s licensing pages. Crime and disorder: the Metropolitan Police licensing team on 020 8247 8607. Keep a written note of each incident with the date, the time and what happened, because that record is what makes a complaint stick.

If you make a representation, you can speak. Anyone who applied for a review or made a relevant representation can address the sub-committee in person, and can bring someone to help or represent them. Documents produced for the first time on the day can only be considered if everyone agrees, so send anything you want looked at in advance.