East Grinstead convenience store has premises licence revoked again

Bodrum, in London Road, East Grinstead, fell foul of licensing laws for the third time in less than three years after Trading Standards officers found 1,644 banned single-use vapes in a storage area.

On top of this, the inspection in November 2025 found 16 packs of illicit cigarettes, along with 11 bottles of aftershave containing a banned ingredient – and the fire exit at the back of the shop was blocked by boxes and piles of stock.

On Monday (February 16), Mid Sussex District Council’s licensing sub-committee revoked the store’s premises licence.

Peter Aston, of West Sussex Trading Standards, said licence holder Ibrahim Kahraman and his brother Mehmet had shown ‘a total disregard for the law over a number of years’.

Mr Aston said there was no confidence that the premises would uphold licensing objectives going forward.

He added: “It is clear and very disappointing, in our view, that the people involved in this premises – particularly Mr Kahraman – seem to have no intention of promoting the licensing objectives.”

Mr Aston said that the ‘repeated and serious non-compliance and serial offending displays a blatant disregard and contempt for the law that seriously undermines all the licensing objectives’.

This was not the first time Bodrum had been before the licensing sub-committee. In November 2023, the premises licence was suspended for six weeks after alcohol was sold to a child during a test purchase organised by Trading Standards. The alcohol licence was then revoked in January 2024.

Both decisions were the subject of an appeal which was dealt with at Brighton Magistrates’ Court in April 2025, where Mr Kahraman settled the case with a six-week suspension and payment of the authority’s ‘significant’ costs.

A report to the committe said that Mr Kahraman caimed the cigarettes were for his personal use and that he didn’t know how to dispose of the vapes once they were banned.

He dismissed claims that vapes had been sold to children, saying ‘they’re just making up stories’.

His representative told the sub-committee that keeping the cigarettes in the shop had been ‘a significant error in judgement’.

She added that it was ‘entirely false’ to say that vapes were sold to minors, stating: “The accusation as it stands is defamatory and damaging to his professional reputation. Without specific details or proof of sale or credible witness testimony, these claims constitute harassment based on hearsay.”

Mr Kahraman has 21 days to appeal the decision.