Revenue & Customs raid on HGV blocks Audlem

At 11.30pm, Friday night in Audlem started to look like something from Starsky and Hutch. At least six unmarked vehicles were seen to be skewed all over the road at the junction of Windmill Drive and Shropshire Street opposite the Bridge pub, together with a large goods vehicle which had turned up Windmill Drive and stopped. At the scene were around 8 or 9 Customs officers in fancy white baseball caps bearing chequered bands and Customs logos. All this provided a fascinating scene for a large crowd of onlookers from the Bridge, all very curious to know what was going on.

It transpires, after some research, that the Customs men were a team from London who had been tailing the HGV for some time, and for reasons still unclear, had decided Audlem was the perfect place to swoop. The HGV was from the Netherlands and, it appears, contained a full load of contraband cigarettes.

The crowd soon became bored (Audlem, after all, is a Vibrant Village which needs real entertainment!) and when they saw that nothing was happening just melted away but the Customs team remained there for a long time sorting things out. None of them, however, was reported to be smoking on the job!

Audlem Online's reporter apologises for the late arrival of this news piece but he has been away for the weekend in the, ahem, 'Smoke'. London, however was all quiet, and clearly much less lively than home!

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