The UK’s local shops recorded 5.6 million incidents of shop theft over the past year, smashing the previous record of 1.1m incidents recorded in the 2023 Crime Report, new research reveals.
The Association of Convenience Stores’ 2024 Crime Report outlines the scale of the retail crime crisis blighting communities across the UK. The report reveals that retailers have recorded more than 600 incidents of theft an hour over the past year.
The report also reveals that over the past year, there have been around 76,000 incidents of violence in shops compared to 41,000 in the 2023 Crime Report.
Retailers are doing what they can to fight back by investing in crime prevention and detection measures, with £339m spent over the past year in areas like CCTV, security staff, intruder alarms and internal communication systems.
Taken together, the cost of crime and the cost of investing in fighting crime results in a 10p ‘crime tax’ on every transaction that takes place in every store across the UK, up from 6p in the 2023 Crime Report.
Association of Convenience Stores Chief Executive James Lowman said: “Retailers are facing an onslaught of crime committed against their businesses on a daily basis, with some losing tens of thousands of pounds per year to theft alone.
“This extended crimewave cannot be allowed to continue. Thieves are known to the community and to the police but they simply do not care, and continue on regardless, filling baskets and trolleys and walking out without fear of reproach.“
Additional findings from the 2024 Crime Report include:
- The top motivations for repeat offending are drug or alcohol addiction (1), organised crime (2) and opportunism (3).
- The top triggers for abuse in stores are encountering shop thieves (1), enforcing the law on age restricted sales (2) and refusing to serve intoxicated customers (3).
- 87% of colleagues in convenience stores have faced verbal abuse over the past year.
- 67% of retailers believe that the cost-of-living crisis has led to an increase in theft.
- 76% of retailers believe organised crime has become more prevalent over the past year.
ACS is calling on central government to take the following action to support retailers in tacking the UK’s retail crime crisis:
- Deliver justice for shopworkers and effective sanctions for offenders.
- Focus additional police resources on neighbourhood policing to keep communities safe.
- Support further investment in technology to deter and detect criminals.
The full ACS Crime Report is available here.
