TWO suspected illegal shisha dens have been raided as the crackdown on secret smoking hideouts continues.

Trading Standards officers from Blackburn and Darwen Council and police swooped on separate premises on the outskirts of the town centre in back-to-back raids.

The action follows this week’s revelations in the Lancashire Telegraph that hundreds of teenagers are coming into Blackburn every weekend and using flats and rooms to gather and smoke flavoured tobacco for a small price.

But officials are concerned at the health implications as well as breaches of smoking and fire safety regulations at the makeshift dens.

Council officials said the latest operations were more like ‘multi-agency inspections’ but both uncovered evidence of suspected breaches of smoking and fire safety legislation.

At the first den, a room above a ‘commercial premises’, investigators found around 20 ‘college age’ teenage boys and girls smoking shisha or ‘hookah’ pipes.

Head of the council’s public protection unit, Chris Allen, said his officers had acted on new information about the shisha den which they had ‘previously been unaware of’.

He said: “As this was a first offence we will be working with the business to give them advice and guidance on smoking legislation to make sure there’s no repeat.”

Mr Allen said evidence gathered from the den included no working smoke detectors and the usual paraphernalia from a ‘run of the mill’ shisha premises including tobacco with no duty paid on it.

There was no under-age smoking going on, he added.

Action is likely to be taken against the second den discovered as it was the second time investigators have caught them in the act, Mr Allen said.

He said a dozen teenagers, again collegeage youths, were found in a single room above a take-away at 7pm on a Friday.

Mr Allen added: “Our general view is that the vast majority of all tobacco is non-duty paid in these types of premises.

“This operation was part of the department’s ongoing work. There’s a number of shisha dens that are subject to ongoing inquiries following intelligence we’ve received.”