Shoplifting offences hit 20-year high, with worst-hit regions revealed

Shoplifting reports jumped 30% in the last year alone, according to newly released Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, which also revealed the worst hit areas.

The ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales, released on 24 July, showed shoplifting reports reaching a 20-year high, with the worst-hit areas being City of London (+34.57%), Sussex (+34.05%), Durham (+31.79%), Derbyshire (+31.31%), and South Wales (+31.18%).

Shoplifting offences increased to 443,995 in the year ending (YE) March 2024, compared to 342,428 in the YE March 2023.

Patrick Holdaway, superintendent at the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC), said: “City of London hosts the NBCC – so we do make sure we do things right and we’re very proactive.

“[The region] has seen an increase, but what we see nationally is an underreporting of retail crime. We have seen increased confidence in local police force delivering really good outcomes. City of London falls in that category. Our detections in shop theft are in the top performing forces in terms of response.”

Police recorded general theft increasing by 3% (to 1.8m offences) year on year, with the rise predominantly the result of increases in shoplifting offences and theft from the person offences.

British Transport Police (BTP), saw the highest year-on-year rise in shoplifting offences at 46.10%, followed by City of London, but both these factions recorded low levels of incidents: BTP recorded 1,923 incidents in 2022-2023, and 3,568 in 2023-2024, while City of London rose from 704 incidents to 1,076 incidents.

While Sussex also saw a notable rise in shoplifting, this may be due to higher reporting rates rather than higher offending rates, with multiple unique schemes running to encourage shops to report more incidents.

Holdaway added: “Sussex, along with Co-op, have a direct reporting system. There are less barriers, and it’s been running as a pilot. But subsequently, they’ve had a higher number of crimes reported, and sometimes there are no known suspects but they have to record it. That can be a challenge.”

Cleveland (+2.17%), Staffordshire (+2.69%) and Suffolk (+5.48%) were the regions to see the lowest increase in shoplifting.

NPCC response

A National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesperson said: “Retail crime has a devastating impact on businesses and communities, and we welcome the continued partnership working between policing, retailers, PCC’s and government to tackle it.

“Since the launch of the Retail Crime Action Plan and Pegasus Partnership in late 2023, we’ve made significant progress in our policing response to shoplifting and it was encouraging to see much higher levels of confidence from retailers in policing at our recent roundtables.

“We continue to see positive progress in the policing response to shoplifting with increased attendance at incidents and strong partnership working across the country, bringing offenders to justice and boosting safety for retail workers.

“Opal, our national policing intelligence unit for serious and organised acquisitive crime, undertook training for retailers to demonstrate how the team works with forces, retailers, businesses and organisations to gather information that is instrumental in identifying and tackling the organised crime groups responsible for a large proportion of retail crime.

“The newly created team has been taking referrals since 1 May, with investigations underway to bring some of these most prolific offenders to justice.”

Findings from the Commercial Victimisation Survey 2023 also revealed an estimated 26% of premises in the wholesale and retail sector experienced customer theft during the previous 12 months, compared with 2014 (20%).

The results come as the new Labour government works to implement its pledges to recruit thousands more police officers, create a new specific offence for assaulting a shopworker, and introduce other ‘stronger measures’ to tackle ‘low-level shoplifting’.

See the figures in the table below.

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