A SCHOOL uniform supplier has been branded ‘irresponsible’ for selling drugs-related items in his shop.

Abbey Street Shopping Centre, in Accrington, also sells scout, brownie and guide uniforms and is recommended to parents by schools.

But he has been criticised for stocking pipes, grinding machines, branded tobacco tins, cannabis-logo pipe screens, cannabis-leaf ash trays and lighters.

Councillors and Hyndburn MP Greg Pope urged the shop’s owner Rohni Vij to remove the items from sale.

Mr Vij said the items were displayed on the counter next to the till so his staff could control who bought them.

But Coun Sean Serridge, who holds the position of Lancashire County Council’s ‘Champion for Young People’, said it was ‘appalling’.

He said: “It’s a terrible example to set to young impressionable people coming in trying on their school uniforms. It’s also not what parents want to see and have to explain to their children.”

Leader of the Hyndburn Council, Coun Peter Britcliffe said while the items were allowed to be sold legally, to do so in such a shop was ‘irresponsible’.

He said: “This type of shop has a social responsibility to consider what they sell alongside school uniforms. It’s not appropriate.”

Hyndburn MP Greg Pope said: “I suspect the owners may not have considered this fully. I would urge them to have a re-think about what is appropriate in a school uniform shop.”

Lancashire County Council’s cabinet member for schools, Coun Vali Patel also joined calls for the store to reconsider the products.

One parent who shops at the store said: “I was appalled when I saw the drug grinding machines and pipes as this is the shop that all the schools around here recommend. It’s just not a good combination.

“I don't want my four-year-old asking what these things are. Why on earth else would a clothes shop sell these things?”

The store is recommended to parents by the majority of the schools in the area, and websites for Peel Park Primary, Accrington Academy and Accrington Benjamin Hargreaves list the store as the main local supplier.

Mr Vij - whose store also sells adult sports wear - said the grinders, besides being used for drugs, he were for grinding herbs and medicine.

He said: “We don’t put these things in the children’s department and we don’t sell drugs or anything illegal.

“As for the grinders people use them for medicine and herbs and the pipes are popular with older customers. People may use them for the wrong things, but we don’t condone that.”

He was backed by Accrington homeless charity worker Dorothy McGregor, who runs Maundy Relief.

She said: “We do deal with a lot of serious drug problems and I don’t think this would have any influence.

“The shop are very generous when helping us outfit poorer families with school uniforms and I don’t think they would do anything immoral. I think they simply haven’t considered how people would react.”