The boy’s parents alerted Caerphilly County Borough Council’s trading standards team, which found a litany of “further concerns about the management” of Village Stores, on High Street. A representative for premises licence holder Nirojan Thavarasa said the shopkeeper acknowledged the seriousness of the incident and had agreed to implement licence improvements. Later trading standards visits to Village Stores uncovered problems with accessing CCTV, training logs and records of underage sale refusals, Ms Cross said. Mr Thavarasa had provided a “due diligence” defence, so the criminal investigation had “come to a halt”, the committee heard. Macie Channing, representing Mr Thavarasa, said the shopkeeper had appointed a new premises licence holder, and had agreed to new licence conditions proposed by the police and council.