Shoplifting offences have risen by 23 per cent to more than 490,000 a year to hit the highest level since records began, new official figures revealed today.
The shocking data is further proof of Britain’s worsening retail theft epidemic, which an industry body warned today was ‘out of control’.
There were a total of 492,914 offences recorded by police in the year to September, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) found – the highest figure since current police recording practices began for the year ending March 2003.
Other types of police recorded crimes that saw increases included robbery and knife offences (both up by four per cent each), while the number of homicides fell by the same amount.
The Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) is based on interviews with 35,000 people and regarded by statisticians as the more accurate picture of crime levels.
This found there were 9.5million incidents of headline crime last year. This was an increase of 12 per cent on the year before, mainly driven by a 19 per cent rise in fraud.
The CSEW has found that crime overall has generally decreased over the last decades, with the exception of some offences – such as sexual assault.
Police data showing shoplifting is at a record high will be seized upon by retail bosses as further proof that urgent action is needed to tackle lawlessness.
It follows warnings from Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium (BRC), that retail crime is ‘spiraling out of control’.
The BRC produced its own research showing that violent and abusive incidents against shop staff hit more than 2,000 a day during the 2023/2024 financial year.
And retailers have ‘little faith’ that the police are taking shoplifting seriously as the cost to firms rose from £1.8billion to £2.2billion.
There were more than 55,000 incidents of theft per day, equating to more than 20 million in total.
The alarming figures show the issue is getting worse, with cases of attacks and shoplifting beating last year’s record numbers to be a fresh high since the surveys began in 2001.
This is despite businesses paying a record £1.8billion on prevention tactics such as CCTV, more security guards and body worn cameras.
Some 61 per cent of retailers say the police response to calls for help has been ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.
Retailers are reporting unprecedented levels of violence towards their staff, with the number of incidents involving a weapon more than doubling to 70 per day.
Alarming cases include staff being ‘spat on, racially abused, and threatened with machetes’ and the perpetrators ‘are getting bolder and more aggressive’ by the day, according to Ms Dickinson.
She added: ‘With little faith in police attendance, it is no wonder criminals feel they have licence to steal, threaten, assault and abuse.
‘Retailers are spending more than ever before, but they cannot prevent crime alone. We need the police to respond to and handle every reported incident appropriately.’
As a result, the industry group reiterated calls for attacks on shop staff to be made a specific offence in England and Wales, as it is in Scotland.
Labour has promised to do this in the upcoming Crime and Policing Bill, which the industry is hoping will be introduced in the coming weeks.
It marks a victory for The Mail, which led the way on exposing abuse against store workers and shoplifting and called for authorities to take the issue more seriously.
The campaign began after Tesco boss Ken Murphy revealed that every frontline worker was to be offered a body camera due to a rise in attacks.
Ministers have also vowed to remove a £200 threshold that means many shoplifting cases are deprioritised by police.
The current laws mean that theft has been ‘decriminalised’, according to Lord Stuart Rose, the former boss of Asda and Marks & Spencer.
But Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer insisted the country could not tolerate ‘a situation where shoplifters can walk in, shoplift and walk back out again and nobody can do anything about it’ last year.
The frequency of attacks mean that many of the 3 million people working in the retail industry are terrified to come to work, according The Retail Trust.
‘People are contacting our helpline in their thousands to report horrifying incidents of abuse and violence and many say that they are now at breaking point,’ Chris Brook-Carter, the organisation’s chief executive, said.