Lillie Road Shop Has Licence Revoked After String of Complaints
Child reportedly hospitalised after buying alcohol there
Best Quality Food and Wine on Lillie Road.
November 18, 2025
A Lillie Road shop has had its licence revoked following a litany of alleged instances when it illegally sold vapes and alcohol to teenagers.
In one instance a 16-year-old girl was reported to have been in hospital for two days due to drinking vodka purchased at Best Quality Food and Wines.
The shop’s premises licence holder, Tara Ram Singh, appeared in front of Hammersmith and Fulham councillors last week in an effort to prevent the revocation. The council’s Licensing Sub-Committee members, however, voted to remove the shop’s licence with immediate effect.
Prior to the meeting the council’s Trading Standards team, which requested the review with support from Licensing and the Met Police, detailed in documents a long list of instances where age-restricted items are reported to have been sold.
These include claimed sales of vapes and alcohol to local schoolchildren, with complaints made to Trading Standards, as well as to underage teenagers taking part in test purchases on behalf of the team.
One complaint from 2023 claimed the shop sold four 200ml bottles of vodka to four female students aged 14 to 15.
“They have then attended school very drunk and two of them were admitted to hospital after being sick with concerns for their welfare,” it continued.
In perhaps the most serious alleged case, Doug Love, from Trading Standards, detailed a father’s complaint that his daughter and two of her friends, all underage, went to the shop on 12 July this year.
One of her daughter’s friends allegedly bought a vape, while the other, aged 16 and visiting from Scotland, bought a bottle of Smirnoff vodka.
The visiting girl is then reported to have taken the alcohol back to Scotland with her, and that after drinking much of the bottle she was hospitalised for two days, including in intensive care.
A separate representation filed in the meeting pack is from a parent of the girl, who describes finding their daughter “unresponsive” having had no idea she was in possession of alcohol. They wrote how they began to panic and assumed it was a drugs overdose, and so called an ambulance.
“At no stage did we think this was alcohol: one of the first things I did when I discovered her in that state was to smell her breath, and the paramedics did the same shortly after they arrived,” they wrote.
“There was no smell (of course, in retrospect this would be the case with vodka). C [the name given to protect the girl’s identity] spent that night and the following night in hospital, in the Intensive Care Unit, and put under heavy sedation to stop seizures. She was finally discharged on 18 July.
“After waking the morning after admission, she explained to her mother about the vodka, and told her where it was being kept. I then retrieved it from her wardrobe, and there was only a fifth of a bottle remaining.”
They added the experience has had a “very disturbing effect on the family”, such as for the girl’s 10-year-old brother who found her on the floor.
On the sale, they wrote their daughter looks young for her age and has a history of mental health issues which have “disturbed her schooling, and [she] exhibits anxiety in unfamiliar and especially public settings”.
They continued: “She is extremely unconfident, unlike some other teenagers. Therefore I, for one, am amazed that anyone could believe she was of an age where it was legal to sell her alcohol.”
Letters were provided from a medical practice and the girl’s psychiatrist reiterating the risks posed and the significance of the incident.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) visited the Best Quality Food and Wine last month though was told no comment was forthcoming.
At the meeting Mr Love and Adrian Overton, Licensing Team Manager at Hammersmith and Fulham Council, outlined the extent of the adverse history associated with the shop. The father of the girl who was hospitalised after visiting from Scotland was also present and reiterated his concerns to members.
“She had taken a lot of alcohol at the time,” he recounted. “She has a history of mental health problems and she looks extremely young for her age. And so while I was preparing a meal she had been drinking the alcohol.
“It was an extreme shock when I was calling for her when the meal was ready, my son found my daughter lying down completely unresponsive behind the bed.”
The man said the incident was “extremely distressing” for him and his family, in particular due to the cause of the issues not immediately being apparent. He said: “I’m extremely amazed that somebody who looked so young could go into a store and buy a litre bottle of vodka despite advice not to from her friends and then she had to undergo this health-type impact.”
Louis Stelling, legal counsel for the premises, said Mr Singh was “well aware” of the failures, which he added were “unacceptable”.
He said Mr Singh was willing to make a number of changes to the operation to avoid the licence being revoked, including installing a new Designated Premises Supervisor (DPS) and ensuring all staff members go on personal licence courses.
Councillors queried the reasons behind the underage sales and what Mr Singh has been doing to proactively improve the shop’s management.
Mr Stelling said Mr Singh accepts he should have done more, though added, “He did interact with customers and he did feel that at all times that they were over the age that they should have been, and the failed purchases were purely accidental.”
Mr Singh himself spoke at one point, telling members the shop is his only premises and is a family-run business.
Mr Overton, however, warned Mr Singh was given a second chance back in 2023 and that trust in the licence holder “has completely broken down”. Councillors agreed to revoke the licence.
Ben Lynch - Local Democracy Reporter