Shoplifting hits record high in UK - with more than 2,000 incidents of shop crime a day

A total of 492,914 offences were logged by forces in the year to September 2024, up 23 per cent from 402,220 in the previous 12 months.

The figure is the highest since current records began in the year to March 2003, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Shoplifting levels had already reached a 20-year high last year, with the latest figures showing the crime continues to be on the rise.

Police recorded 1.8 million theft offences in the year to September, a 2% increase driven by shoplifting and a 22% rise in crimes involving theft from a person (146,109), according to the data published on Thursday.

It comes amid warnings that shoplifting is “spiralling out of control” after the annual crime survey by the British Retail Consortium suggested there were more than 2,000 incidents a day, with staff facing assault, being threatened with weapons, and racial and sexual abuse. It is three times the level of 2020, when there were 455 incidents a day. Over the last year, there were 70 incidents a day which involved a weapon – more than double the previous year.

Some 61 per cent of respondents described the police response to incidents as “poor” or “very poor”, although 3% described it as “excellent” – the first time in five years that any retailers have rated it as such.

NationalWorld’s Silent Crime campaign in the autumn highlighted the epidemic of so-called low-level crimes that have a huge impact on people and their communities. We heard from many traders and businesspeople that not only is shoplifting prevalent, but that there is a general feeling that there is no point calling the police about incidents as they are too stretched to be able to dedicate any resources to the problem.

We took a group of readers to see Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and policing minister Dame Diana Johnson at the Home Office, who both pledged that a planned recruitment drive of police would see more officers available to tackle neighbourhood crime, which also includes anti-social behaviour.

Major retailers have been raising concerns for months about the increased cost of theft while the Government has vowed to tackle low-level shoplifting and make assaulting a shop worker a specific criminal offence.

The move to create the separate offence follows a long-running campaign by business owners and Conservative backbencher Matt Vickers.

Retailers said they hope the measures set out in the King’s Speech to Parliament last year after Labour won the election will make it easier for police to investigate and prosecute criminals.

Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said the figures “remain unacceptably high” and the crimes were “blighting town centres and high streets right across the country”.

“For far too long these crimes have been written off as ‘low-level’ and not treated with the urgency or seriousness they deserve”, she said as she insisted the Government was “determined to turn the page” with its plan to boost police numbers and give officers the powers they need to “crack down on the criminals who cause misery in our communities”.