Shoplifting surges to highest levels since records began

Shoplifting in England and Wales has surged to an all-time high, with nearly half a million cases reported over the past 12 months.

A total of 492,914 offences were logged by police in the year to September 2024, up 23% from 402,220 in the previous year.

The figure is the highest since current records began in the year to March 2003, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It comes after 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.

Of the 473,342 police-recorded shoplifting offences over the past year, only 19% resulted in a court summons, Home Office data shows.

It comes amid warnings that shoplifting is ‘spiralling out of control’ after a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) suggested there were more than 2,000 incidents a day, with staff facing assault, being threatened with weapons, and racial and sexual abuse.

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’.

Overall, police recorded 6.66 million crimes in England and Wales in the 12 months to September, a very slight drop (down 0.4%) on the previous year’s total of 6.69 million.

This is up from 4.03 million a decade earlier in 2013/14, but reflects ‘changes in police activity and recording practices’ as well as genuine changes in trends in crimes reported to and recorded by forces, and ‘should not be used to say that overall crime has increased’, the ONS said.

Home Office figures published at the same time show the proportion of investigations into crimes recorded by police in the latest period which were closed with no suspect identified stood at 39.8%, compared with 40.3% in the previous year.

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