A BUSINESS owner who brazenly sold 'dangerous' legal highs at an Oxford shop has been sentenced.

Alastair Sanderson was handed a suspended sentence after admitting six counts of supplying dangerous products to customers at his shop Red Eye, which was shut down in 2015.

The 31-year-old ran the shop in Cowley Road alongside Darren Lee Manley, who was sentenced last year.

They stocked products posing as research chemicals and herbal incense, but gave the substances suspicious-sounding names including Blow, China White and Charly Sheen. 

Sanderson, who lives in Harwell, was sentenced last week to 12 weeks imprisonment suspended for 24 months.

He was handed his punishment at Oxford Magistrates' Court last Thursday, and ordered to pay the council £20,000 in costs and work 100 unpaid hours.

Trading Standards investigators at Oxfordshire County Council discovered the products were being sold for use as so-called 'legal highs', which were then legal but are now prohibited by law.

Jody Kerman, Trading Standards operations manager said: "These products were unsafe and dangerous. They were labelled incorrectly, with attractive sounding names and packaging and contained dangerous substances with no appropriate warnings or instructions.

"The defendants were warned of the concerns surrounding these products, but continued to sell them."

Sanderson handed himself in after his former business partner Manley was sentenced last January, after pleading guilty to 16 counts of selling unsafe and dangerous products. 

Manley was sentenced to six months imprisonment, suspended for 2 years, fined £20,000 and ordered to pay £40,000 costs. 

The men operated through a company called RAD Trading Limited, which was also fined £20,000 and ordered to pay £40,000 costs.

Richard Webb, head of community protection services at the council, said: "New legislation is now in place to cover these items, but at the time of these offences, dangerous products such as these, were being openly sold to consumers in Oxford from a retail shop."