Convenience retailers have suffered over 6.2m shop thefts over the last year, that’s 10% higher than the previous year and over 12 times higher than police records, which show just 492, 914 incidents.
The figures from the Association of Convenience Stores’ (ACS) 2025 Crime Report, revealed that crime is costing retailers an estimated £316m, equating to £6,529 per store. Retailers have spent over £265m on crime prevention and detection measures in their store over the last year. Taken together, the cost of crime and investment in crime prevention amount to a 10p crime tax on every transaction in a convenience store, ACS has claimed.
What’s more, there were over 59,000 estimated incidents of violence in the convenience sector over the last year, and 1.2million incidents of verbal abuse.
Glasgow retailer Natalie Lightfoot has invested heavily in CCTV to try and deter shoplifters. “In our stores, we often encounter theft driven by
addiction, which can pose significant risks to staff,” she said in the report. “Balancing staff safety with effective theft deterrence is
challenging; we want to ensure staff can engage with shoplifters without putting themselves in harm’s way.”
Amit Puntambekar, who runs a Nisa Local in Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire, was attacked and injured when he attempted to challenge a thief and has been dealing with violent threats for months. Speaking in the report, he said: ““When your staff are threatened with a hammer, when someone threatens to kill you who lives near your shop and the police don’t take it seriously, what’s the point?”
Ian Lewis, who runs a SPAR store in Minster Lovell, had his store targeted by two ram raid attacks in recent months, the second of which between Christmas and New Year where thieves ripped out the stores’ cash machine. Speaking in the report, he said: “My business was ram raided by criminals in a Land Rover and the cash machine ripped out. My parents live above the shop, I will never forget the voicemail that I got from my parents when this happened.”
The report comes as parliament considers the Crime and Policing Bill at Second Reading stage today (10th March). The Bill, which mainly impacts England and Wales, aims to introduce a separate offence for assaulting a shopworker (as is already the case in Scotland); to scrap the £200 threshold for shop theft offences; and to increase police powers to deal with anti-social behaviour, among other measures to deal with prolific offenders effectively.
Association of Convenience Stores chief executive James Lowman said: “The levels of theft, abuse and violence experienced by retailers over the last year make 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.”
