LoginTackling Underage Sales: From Test Purchasing to Effective Enforcement
This practical two-hour virtual course takes delegates through the enforcement journey from intelligence and test-purchase planning through to evidence gathering, business engagement and enforcement options. It will consider how Trading Standards can make best use of limited resources, strengthen the quality of investigations and use test purchasing as part of a wider, proportionate strategy for improving compliance.
This session is designed:
- To help Trading Standards teams make underage-sales activity more targeted, effective and defensible. It provides a practical framework for moving from intelligence and test purchasing through evidence gathering and business engagement to proportionate enforcement.
- To gain practical approaches that can be applied to both traditional high-street retail and increasingly complex online and hybrid sales journeys. The course will also help authorities make better use of limited enforcement resources by focusing activity on risk, improving the quality of evidence gathered and selecting interventions that are most likely to deliver sustained compliance and protect children and young people.
Who should attend?
This course is suitable for:
The core audience is enforcement officers and managers involved in age-restricted products and services, underage-sales, business compliance and enforcement. It is also applicable to police - particularly neighbourhood or retail crime police.
It will be relevant to officers who plan or conduct test-purchase exercises; investigate alleged underage sales; advise or engage with retailers and other businesses; manage intelligence-led age-restriction projects; or make decisions about warnings, compliance interventions and formal enforcement.
The course should also be useful to newer officers seeking a practical grounding in underage-sales work and more experienced practitioners wishing to refresh and benchmark their approach.
What you will learn
By the end of the theory session, participants will:
- Recognise the main categories of age-restricted products and services and understand the purpose of the controls that apply to their sale and supply;
- Recognise indicators and evidence of underage sales and understand how concerns, complaints and other information can be developed into useful intelligence;
- Understand the impact that persistent underage sales can have on children and young people, local communities and the safety and vitality of high streets;
- Recognise the importance of effective enforcement in maintaining a level playing field for legitimate businesses that invest in staff training, age checks and other measures to comply with the law;
- Gather, record and share intelligence about suspected underage sales and identify opportunities for effective cross-agency working with the police, licensing authorities and other partners;
- Understand how intelligence and other information can be used to prepare and target underage-sales enforcement activity;
- Understand the role of test purchasing and how test purchasers can be used as part of an underage sales operation (without covering the more advanced issues associated with their recruitment, management, safeguarding and health and safety - which are covered by CTSI's Advanced Practitioner's course);
- Contribute effectively to an underage sales operation, including understanding officer roles, preparing for visits and test purchases, and responding appropriately when a sale takes place;
- Gather, record and preserve relevant evidence following an underage sale or other suspected breach, including evidence required to support subsequent enforcement action;
- Recognise the range of formal and informal enforcement options that may be available, including advice and warnings, action plans, fixed penalties, prosecution, licensing action, minor variations, restricted premises orders and restricted sales orders, and relevant anti-social behaviour interventions; and
- Understand how proportionate underage sales enforcement, business engagement and partnership working contribute to safer high streets, improved compliance and the wider objectives of the Safe High Streets campaign.
Our Trainer
Tony Allen - Chief Executive, Age Check Certification Scheme
Tony Allen is a specialist in age assurance, age verification and the regulation and enforcement of age-restricted products and services. He is Chief Executive of the Age Check Certification Scheme and has worked extensively with regulators, government bodies, enforcement authorities and businesses in the UK and internationally on approaches to preventing children from accessing age-restricted goods, services and content.
Tony has been closely involved in the development of national and international approaches to age assurance, including as Technical Editor of ISO/IEC 27566-1, the international standard for age assurance systems. His work encompasses test purchasing, compliance assessment, age-verification and age-estimation technologies, online and offline retail environments, and the practical implementation of age-restriction requirements.
He brings together the perspectives of enforcement, standards, technology and business compliance, with a particular focus on how organisations can demonstrate that age-restriction controls work effectively in practice rather than simply having policies and procedures in place.
Session and Booking Details
Available Sessions:
- Session 1: 17 December 2026 (10:00-12:00)
- Session 2: 19 January 2027 (14:00-16:00)
- Session 3: TBC
- Session 4: TBC
- Rate: FREE
- Location: via MS Teams
- CPPD: 2 hours
PLEASE NOTE: By clicking on the above link, you will be taken to CTSI's Booking Portal, where you can select your session and enter your details. Our general Terms and Conditions are here.
