Two major supermarket chains have received written warnings for selling alcohol to under-18s in Fife.
Tesco and Asda were both caught out under the region’s test purchasing scheme which sees young people working with the police in an attempt to buy booze.
The scheme piloted in Fife before being rolled out across Scotland ensures retailers refuse to sell alcohol to anyone under age or anyone buying drink on their behalf.
One of its aims is to rid communities of the scourge of drunken teenagers and anyone who fails the test risks having their licence to sell alcohol revoked.
Officers carried out a number of test purchases in west Fife at the tail end of last year in response to complaints from the public about anti-social behaviour.
Only two retailers failed the test Asda in Dalgety Bay, and the Rosyth Tesco store.
Both said this week that steps had been taken to ensure staff were fully trained and policies on alcohol were stringent.
The supermarkets were brought before Fife’s licensing committee where members agreed to issue written warnings.
Licensing board chair Andrew Rodger told The Courier: ”The police had numerous calls about anti-social behaviour in the area. It wasn’t just them who were given test purchases others were too but they were the only two who failed.”
A spokeswoman for Tesco said the chain was very disappointed to have failed a test purchase at the Rosyth store.
”We take our commitment to being a responsible retailer very seriously and we will continue to work with Fife Council to ensure that they are satisfied that our training and policies are stringent enough,” she said.
”We have in place a Think 25 policy, which means our staff are trained to ask for proof of age ID from any customer the staff member thinks might be under 25 when buying alcohol.”
An Asda spokeswoman said the company was working hard to stop under-age sales of alcohol and promote sensible drinking across the country.
”In fact, we were the first retailer to introduce Challenge 25 in all our stores where we ask anyone who looks under 25 to provide proof they are aged 18 or over,” she said.
”We’ve also pledged £1m to Addaction over three years to support alcohol awareness initiatives and we’ve doubled the number of mystery shopper test purchases in our stores.”
The spokesman said, following the failure in December, a number of actions were taken immediately in the Dalgety Bay store.
The person responsible for selling alcohol without asking for ID was taken off the checkout and retrained. He or she will not return to working on checkouts until the store manager is convinced they are fully aware of what is required of them.
A repeat test purchase was carried out in the supermarket in January and it passed.