Violence and abuse continues to be daily part of life for retailers and shop workers, says the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) in its annual crime survey.
The total cost of crime to the convenience sector has risen to £316m per year. The cost of crime to the consumer equates to a 10p tax on every transaction, according to the ACS. It estimates some 6.2m incidents of theft last year; most, 87 per cent of those behind the counter received verbal abuse last year; some 44pc experienced hate-motivated abuse. The report quotes Iona Blake, Europe mobility and convenience security manager, bp; the criminologist Prof Emmeline Taylor; and from ACS members who suffered from crime. Numerous retail people are quoted about measures to combat theft, including Mark Foulds, Security Manager, Lincolnshire Co-operative; and Gareth Lewis, Loss Prevention and Security Services Manager at Southern Co-op. Methods include: wearing of staff head-sets to raise alerts, body-worn video to de-escalate incidents; and bespoke stickers on high-risk items as ‘defensive merchandising’ to state where the item is from.
More detail
As for the report in more detail, it notes a ‘significant increase in the adoption of defensive merchandising strategies, such as tagging products or employing labels that deter the resale of stolen goods by repeat offenders’. The three most commonly stolen types of goods are alcohol, meat and confectionery; and the number one motivation for repeat offending (which makes up an estimated 45 per cent of the offences) is drug or alcohol addiction.
The report describes some of its findings as ‘depressingly familiar’; for example, the main three ‘triggers for violence’ in stores are encounters face to face with a suspected thief; enforcing an age-restricted sales policy at the till, such as for alcohol and cigarettes; and refusing to serve intoxicated customers (as the ACS points out, retailers are legally obliged to refuse an alcohol sale to someone who is intoxicated). The report calls on retailers ‘to commit to developing processes and investing time in reporting incidents to the police’, because offenders are targeting multiple retail premises, stealing goods to order, to sell on; to disrupt will take retailers to report all incidents, to show the amount of crime and identify offenders to the police.
What they say
ACS chief executive James Lowman said: “The levels of theft, abuse and violence experienced by retailers over the last year makes for shocking reading, but it will not surprise our members who are living it on a daily basis. Criminals targeting local shops without fear of reproach cannot be allowed to continue, which is why we’re fully supportive of the Government’s Crime and Policing Bill. In our Crime Report, we have set out ways that retailers and the police have made a positive difference, putting in place strategies that work to keep retailers and their colleagues safer, and we need stronger legislation to back that up. This must be the moment we commit to ending the retail crime crisis, through Government, police and retailers working together.”
The ACS pointed to the first major Crime and Policing Bill of the Labour Government, that was at its Second Reading stage this month. The Bill aims to introduce a separate offence for assaulting a shop worker, to scrap a £200 threshold for shop theft offences, and to increase police powers to deal with anti-social behaviour, among other measures. The ACS says it’s backed the Bill as what it calls a long-overdue turning point on retail crime.
Comment
For the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC), Joint Leads on Business and Retail Crime, Sussex Conservative PCC Katy Bourne and North Wales Labour PCC Andy Dunbobbin, said: “We know from official crime statistics that the number of retail crime offences reported to police continues to rise to record levels. In part this is down to much-improved work between police forces and businesses to encourage better reporting of such crimes, but the numbers illustrate the enormity of the problem that needs to be gripped and dealt with.
“The ACS report says the sector has invested millions in crime prevention measures such as in-store CCTV and PCCs have been at the forefront of the drive to ensure shop theft and violence against shop workers are taken more seriously by the police. We are pleased to see the ACS highlight the importance of PCCs in holding their chief constables accountable on their commitment under the Retail Crime Action Plan to improve their response to shop theft and violence against staff.
“We have been pressing for the introduction of a stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker for some time so we very much welcome its inclusion in the recently published Crime and Policing Bill. It is important we send a clear message to retailers that violence and abuse against them will not be tolerated.
“Police action against organised shop theft is also making a difference. The PCC-initiated Pegasus Partnership facilitates the sharing of intelligence between some of the country’s largest retailers and the police to inform robust enforcement activity. It has already resulted in more than 100 arrests of those involved in organised retail crime in less than a year and identified 93 vehicles linked to shop theft.
“This report states that only 36 per cent of all retail crime is reported to police so it is clear more needs to be done to build confidence amongst convenience store workers that police will respond to their reports. We support the ACS’s call for retailers to report all incidents to enable police to act whilst also building an intelligence-based picture of those committing what are, often, repeat crimes.”
The report is on the ACS website: https://cdn.acs.org.uk/public/ACS%20Crime%20Report%202025.pdf.
