It’s a scene familiar across the capital. Run-down high streets, just a stone’s throw from well-heeled residential neighbourhoods, where fruit shops knock up against building supply merchants and restaurants with enormous pictures of the food advertising their wares. There are often solicitors, funeral directors, carpet shops, the odd café of varying quality.
There will also be endless barber shops, often empty of customers. The borough of Westminster has one of the highest proportions of barber shops within the capital, followed by Kensington and Chelsea, and in third place Camden.
Five years ago, the scene looked rather different. Barber shops are the fastest growing sector of the retail economy, according to the Local Data Company, and figures from the National Hair and Beauty Federation show that 304 barber shops opened across the country in the first half of 2023 — almost six times the number of coffee shops that opened in the same period.
“There are not enough haircuts for the amount of barber shops”
London’s barber shop boom
Meanwhile, data from the Office for National Statistics show the number of hairdressing, barber and beauty spots in London has risen from 5,930 in 2015 to 8,915 in 2024. But is the explosion of barber shops in the capital really related to a rise in male vanity, or is there a sinister side?
“There are not enough haircuts for the amount of barber shops [in London],” former Met Police detective chief inspector Mike Neville told The London Standard. “You get these guys charging £10 to £15 a haircut, and then they are driving around in a massive Mercedes.”
Neville is not the only person to have noticed that the proliferation of barber shops in the capital feels suspicious. The issue has also caught the attention of Reform UK MP Richard Tice, who has accused barber shops of being money laundering spots “for drug money” and vowed to investigate the issue.
“The barber shops are like American candy stores in the capital”
“The barber shops are like American candy stores in the capital,” Neville continues. “They are obviously some kind of money laundering. There is never anybody in them.” He adds: “I think barber shops are connected to money laundering and drug dealing. That’s what’s driving this. Everybody knows it’s crooked.”
Earlier this month, the National Crime Agency (NCA) warned there is “a realistic possibility” that more than £100 billion is laundered through and within the UK or UK-registered corporate structures each year.
Cash-only businesses have long been a way for criminals to hide in plain sight, and while nail salons were once the primary focus, the stratospheric rise in the number of barber shops over the past few years has spread concern among crime experts that there has been a shift from other cash-only businesses such as car washes and nail salons towards using barber shops as fronts.
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Over the past three years, several major crime rings have been linked to London barber shops. Hammersmith barber Tarek Namouz, who owned Boss Crew Barbers, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for sending £11,000 to fund terrorist activity in Syria in 2022. A people-smuggling plot was also uncovered at a barber shop in Colindale the same year. Gul Wali Jabarkhel was jailed for 10 years after offering lorry drivers thousands of pounds to illegally bring people into the UK across the Channel.
Elsewhere, CSG Barbers in Lewisham was exposed to be an illegal hideout and DIY casino used by two Albanian brothers running vast amounts of cocaine from London up into the Midlands in March 2022.
For nearly a year, the “Eddie line” led by brothers Edmund and Edward Haziri ran drugs up to Swadlincote, north-west Leicestershire and east Staffordshire. The brothers were ultimately both jailed for 15 years, alongside eight others connected to the drug’s line.
But even with clampdowns in some areas, Neville fears the “police are only scratching the surface” of barber shop crime in the capital.
Of course, the vast majority of barbers are set up to simply serve the local community. And yet Justine Carter, the director of the modern slavery charity Unseen, warns that the rapid increase in the number of barber shops means “there is an opportunity arising for people to be exploited”.
“When there is no trail of money changing hands, it makes it much easier to keep your business practices undercover”
She explains that “quite a lot of barber shops rely heavily on cash. When there is no trail of money changing hands, it makes it much easier to keep your business practices undercover and therefore abuse and exploit people who work for you.”
She’s not the only one concerned. The NCA also warned that cash-intensive businesses within the personal care, leisure and hospitality industries are used by criminals to conceal the origins of illicit cash. “There were thoughts that Albanian and Kurdish gangs were involved in setting up barber shops,” Carter explains. “Quite often, they are a bit of a ruse for other criminal activity.
“We have been keeping an eye on [barber shops] and most of what we see is labour abuse. But there is that potential of it tipping into modern slavery.”
Carter, who led the development of the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, warned illegal working penalties can be an indicator that employers are “cutting corners”, allowing exploitation to creep in.
Illegal workers in London’s barber shops
An investigation by the Standard has found six barber shops across London which have been fined thousands of pounds for having illegal workers since 2021.
Last year, Mr Leo barber shop on Camden High Street received an illegal working notice (issued to employers who have hired individuals without the legal right to work in the UK) and was fined £20,000. In a similar case, MK Barbers on Kingsland Road in Dalston was fined £10,000. Barbers have also faced huge fines in Walthamstow, Islington, Hayes and Bromley.
Other cases have also been found in hairdressers. And it’s not only cheap high-street barbers who are at risk. Celebrity stylist Daniel Galvin Junior, whose clients include Princess Beatrice, Amanda Holden and Holly Valance, was fined £15,000 for illegally employing a worker at his flagship store in Belgravia in 2023. At least 14 barbers were fined up to £90,000 between April and June last year.
“These kinds of people put a bad name on barbering”
As a result, the reputation of honest business-owners is being seriously tarnished, causing huge frustration for legitimate barbers across the capital. High-profile court cases and headlines about criminals in barbers have left many in London frustrated and concerned that their trade is being given a bad name by some who are “trying it on”. Salih Kara, who has been a barber in Shoreditch for 15 years, is fed up with the bad apples within the barbering world. “These kinds of people put a bad name on barbering — money laundering, doing bad things, selling drugs.”
He’s not the only one. Richard Marshall started making teas and sweeping the floors at a barber shop when he was 12. He now runs Pall Mall Barbers, which has eight shops across the capital, including one of the oldest barber shops in the world in Trafalgar Square.
The veteran barber pointed out that historically, barbers are some of the happiest professionals in Britain and added that 60 per cent of the industry is neurodivergent. “This is a house for people who are diverse,” he explains. “Who aren’t going to be accountants or may be able to earn money in other ways.”
“I think people just focus on the negatives”
He adds: “I have been a barber for 37 years, all of my adult life. When I started there was only one or two. In London, when I worked in Mayfair there wasn’t many barber shops at all.
“As an opportunity, people have seen barbering as a great business. There are so many positives around it, but I think people just focus on the negatives.”
Barbers in the capital often provide services far beyond the comb and scissors, with some handed mental health training to help them comfort clients and signpost them towards professional help.
Others are trained to take customers’ blood pressure as part of a major drive to prevent strokes and heart attacks.
Mentors at Re-Style Barber Academy in Haringey, which has trained more than 500 men and teenagers, have even spoken about how students come to escape gang violence, with some telling stories of guns, shootings and kidnappings.
Sadly, the trust in the profession is being eroded by suspicion surrounding the extraordinary proliferation. In 2023, barbers were named the fastest-growing sector of the retail and leisure industry by The Local Data Company, with more than 2,300 opened that year.
Around London, there are four barbers for every 10,000 Londoners. In one particularly densely packed area, there are 17 barbers in and around a two-mile stretch of Streatham High Road; on a similarly sized section of Kingsland Road between Stoke Newington and Haggerston, there are around 25.
- 50% – the rise in the number of barbers and beauty spots in London over the past 10 years
- £100bn – the amount the NCS believes is laundered through UK-registered corporate structures each year
- 304 – the number of barber shops which opened in the UK in the first half of 2023
- 60% – the proportion of the industry who are neurodivergent
- 46% – the amount of the workforce who are age 16-34
- 45% – the percentage of hairdressers and barber salons that make a profit
For one, the chief executive of the National Hair and Beauty Federation Caroline Larissey explains, barber shops’ success could be put down to the industry’s quick ability to adapt and entice customers. And yet, “when you talk to hairdressers, they are really struggling. The overheads are a lot more. The minimum wage is going up,” Larissey explains.
“There are a lot of things that are making it very challenging for small and micro businesses. But barbering seems to be edging that off.” This could indicate foul play.
“There has always been this black economy in the sector that has always gone under the radar”
“There has always been this black economy in the sector that has always gone under the radar,” she adds. “Unfortunately, that is just a mechanism for unscrupulous people.”
Larissey highlighted that you do not need a qualification to become a barber or a hairdresser, nor do you need a licence to access a cut-throat razor. This opens the profession up for potential exploitation.
In east London’s vibrant Hoxton pocket, Ozan Figani has seen the number of barber shops steadily increase since he opened his doors 26 years ago.
The barber trained six days a week for two years at a Wood Green college when he first decided to pick up his clippers and raised concerns about the quality of barbering in the capital. He studied four months of barbering theory when he first started out and was only allowed to test his scissors on real hair after eight months of learning.
But now Figani said that the same qualification is handed over within three months. “Six days a week we used to go for two years,” he says. “Now for a few hours they go and they say, ‘You’re a barber’.”
But how can you tell which barbers are legitimate? Larissey explains that telltale signs that something may not seem right at a barber shop include insisting that customers pay in cash, or to bank transfer the money.
“Establishments offering really low-price haircuts could be a red flag”
If barber shops look “sparkly and new” with barbers always sitting around, then that may also be a suspicious sign, Larissey adds.
Detective Superintendent Charlotte Tucker of Wiltshire Police, a national expert in the rise of barber shops, has previously warned of similar tell tale signs.
“Establishments offering really low-price haircuts could be a red flag, indicating they are run by a criminal gang,” she recently explained. “Everyone loves a bargain, but if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”