Text of responses to shop theft inquiry, 2024

Examination of witnesses

Sophie Jordan, James Lowman and Adam Ratcliffe.

Q34 The Chair: Welcome to this second oral evidence session for our inquiry into shoplifting. I would be grateful if our witnesses could introduce themselves.

James Lowman: I am the chief executive of the Association of Convenience Stores. There are 50,000 convenience stores in the UK, and it is our job to represent them to government.

Sophie Jordan: I am the manager of the National Association of Business Crime Partnerships, the representative body for Business Crime Reduction Partnerships in the UK.

Adam Ratcliffe: I am the operations director for Safer Business Network, a non-profit organisation that owns and implements multiple crime reduction partnerships.

The Chair: We look forward to your evidence. If there are things that you have not had the opportunity to say but you think we need to know, please feel free to write to us pretty quickly after this session.

Q35 Lord McInnes of Kilwinning: My question is focused on Mr Lowman, but the other two witnesses should please feel able to come in. We have just had compelling witnesses from the world of academia and from a larger chain of stores about the effect of shop theft­—calling it that, rather than shoplifting, is my learning point of today—and its impact across the UK more generally and on larger stores. In this evidence session, we are particularly interested in smaller businesses, especially convenience stores. James, can you explain to us the impact of shop theft on those smaller stores? We are particularly interested in exploring the rate of reporting from convenience stores and what your members feed back to you about feeling able to report and the response they might get from the police.

James Lowman: I can refer to a number of pieces of information. First, we ask our independent members about their experiences of shop theft and whether it has got better or worse in the previous period of time. That creates a shop theft index, which has been rising consistently at an alarming rate since about summer 2021. Over a sustained period of time, the proportion of retailers reporting an increase in shop theft is continuing to go up.

I will illustrate some of the costs of crime across the whole sector. The cost of crime as a whole is about a quarter of £1 billion. On top of that, more is being invested in crime prevention measures. When you add all that up and divide it by the number of transactions in the convenience store sector, it equates to a tax of 10p per transaction, if you like. If there was no crime, every time you tapped your card or paid at a till then it would be 10p less—that is the scale of the financial cost.

But there are far greater impacts even than that—particularly the impact of violence. We know that shop theft is one of the biggest triggers for violence against shop workers—and retailers—when they challenge shop thieves. People committing these offences are often in a heightened state: they often have dependency and addiction problems, and they are desperate. That can escalate very quickly. The biggest single trigger for violence in stores is challenging someone stealing from the store.

That tallies with the information we get on the people committing the offences. They are usually repeat offenders—people with addiction problems, as I say—and are often well known to the people running the stores. There are often two-person, three-person or four-person crime waves in a housing estate or village. You often know who these people are, but they continue to offend.

As well as the volume of theft, what has probably changed is its brazenness. Rather than sneaking in and stealing some items, people are now clearing whole shelves. That comes with a strong degree of threat to the people in the store.

There were 5.6 million incidents of shop theft and 76,000 incidents of violence in the sector last year. However, there is underreporting; no one has an accurate figure because a lot of retailers do not bother to report crime. They do not believe anything will happen if they report it to the police, and they therefore think that the most effective thing is just not to report. We are starting to see some changes in that, turning around that vicious cycle. In some areas, we are seeing much better protocols for reporting: simple online systems for reporting crime, followed up by the police, with information given back to the retailer, particularly about identifying those prolific repeat offenders who are responsible for so much of the crime. At the moment, the biggest barrier to a retailer reporting is that they just do not think anything will happen.

Often, it can be quite a laborious process to report crime: providing the images and giving witness statements can take a lot of time for the retailer or their colleagues. There is no faith that the police, or ultimately the courts, will intervene with effective penalties against those prolific repeat offenders. We have to get ourselves out of that vicious cycle.

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning: Does the inevitable proximity of the convenience store to the community add a level of fear of intimidation or repercussions, if people are known within the community and it will be obvious when a sole trader reports someone, perhaps with two other members of staff who may well be from the same family?

James Lowman: Absolutely. These people live next door to colleagues—there is that ultimate proximity. Over half of customers walk to a convenience store to shop, and nearly half of colleagues walk to the store. They are very much drawn from the local community. So there is that proximity, which makes it that much more real. It means that colleagues are sometimes fearful of coming to work or leaving and going home. The threat “I know where you live” is not empty: those people absolutely know where they live because it is next door to them. That level of threat is very real.

More retailers are telling us that it is harder to get colleagues to come and work in stores and it is harder to retain them. Where there have been incidents or a threat of incidents—or where they see me, Paul Gerrard or someone else talking about this serious issue in the media—they think, “Is this something we want to be exposed to?” Certainly, family members ask whether that is the job they want them to do. Obviously, there are lots of great things about working in the local shop: there are great, local, secure and flexible jobs. There are lots of great reasons to work in the local shop, but I understand people’s reservations, which are now starting to have an impact on recruitment in our sector.

Adam Ratcliffe: The thing to add is the frequency with which a lot of these volume crimes take place. These prolific and persistent offenders are local, as James said. They are offending at such a rate that it has an impact on the members of staff within those stores, who see them every day—potentially several times. Some offenders commit 80 or 90 offences in a two-month or three-month period in the same store. If you work in that store, the impact that has on you is incredible. It is the difference between actual crime and the perception or fear of crime. Your perception is that nothing is happening and that these people are offending with no possible outcome against them, so they will come back the next day and the next. This is having a significant impact on the people who work in these stores. We are also hearing that members of staff are having to be moved to different stores because of the things James mentioned.

The Chair: Do we have any figures that illustrate the difficulty in recruiting people to own, manage or work in convenience stores as a result of shop theft?

James Lowman: I do not have data that would point to a direct cause and effect. We certainly have some evidence from members who are talking about this as an increasing challenge, so I can try to find some of those examples and provide the committee with them.

The Chair: It would be very helpful if you could find anything to help us.

Q36 Baroness Buscombe: We have had quite a fascinating first session, so this is very helpful as well. I want to ask about the most effective strategies to deal with shoplifting by prolific offenders and organised crime groups, from both a business and policing perspective. In that context, are we now talking about a cultural thing? It is more than just saying, “We need a stronger presence, we need to pursue all lines of inquiry, we need to focus on repeat offenders”; there is a massive cultural issue here, whereby so many people now think this is easy street and a lawless situation. What can we do to involve the public more and raise awareness of what is going on in their villages, towns and cities?

Adam Ratcliffe: One of the issues is that we need to be able to talk about the positive work going on behind the scenes to try to raise awareness. This is always the problem. I think it impacts police involvement a lot of the time, because they are criticised from every corner of society, especially at the moment. They do not want to put their head above the parapet to talk about anything unless they absolutely have to, because they will just receive criticism. When something is so drastically underreported, as shop theft is, the idea that we might start to delve into it and get a real idea of the figures will never come across amazingly well. Senior officers will feel criticised because their forces are not dealing with an issue properly. We cannot then talk about what is going on because it will reduce public confidence by raising public awareness.

On the cultural thing, as James mentioned, one of the big changes for anybody who has worked in this sector for a long period is the change in behaviour from the prolific offenders. Nobody even has the audacity to run any more: people are walking out of stores. When they are challenged by staff, they say, “Well, what are you going to do?” A certain number of years ago, they at least made efforts to be a bit more furtive with their behaviour and get out.

This comes into the key effective strategies that you asked about. There are two main areas: sharing of information and intelligence, and multiagency collaborative partnership working. It is about the right people who have interests in this sector coming together to work collaboratively to try to address the issue. While we are talking about having no police resources to address volume crime, we cannot keep banging the drum of “What are you doing about shop theft?”

Instead, we need to be able to make the police as efficient as possible with their resources, by the private sector, the third sector and industry working collaboratively to paint a much clearer picture so that the police can be very efficient with their resources and go after that anecdotal figure of 10% committing 60% to 70% of the crime in an area—those local offenders who have been named by the staff in those stores. The wealth of information, understanding and knowledge in this industry is huge, and it is an untapped resource because of the fear of tapping into it and seeing the true scope of the problem. If we could get past that and start looking at the problem-solving element, it would be huge. But, again, it comes back to public perception: if it comes out into the media that there are potentially 8 million incidents of retail crime and less than 4% have been reported to the police, that will be a huge issue as well.

Baroness Buscombe: I will not name the market town, but recently there were five police on show, spending hours in the town centre and being available to chat about domestic abuse. Why could they not do the same to make people aware of these appalling crimes? We hear that they are not even using the word robbery. This is serious crime. Of course domestic abuse is serious, but is there an issue around prioritising?

Sophie Jordan: I certainly think there is. Retail crime is often looked at as a monetary value, and we do not look at the personal cost to individuals and people working in the store, and the effect on customers. It needs to be looked at as a more victim-based crime. When you have a victim of domestic abuse in front of you, it is very clear who that victim is. It is about raising awareness of the victim impact.

The Chair: Perhaps we can get a bit more detail on that.

Q37 Lord Dubs: This question is addressed specifically to you, Sophie. Could you explain a bit more how Business Crime Reduction Partnerships work and operate to reduce acquisitive crime and violent crime against businesses, their premises, staff and customers? Could you add a little bit about information gathering and sharing work experience?

Sophie Jordan: Business Crime Reduction Partnerships are independent, not-for-profit organisations. Their role is to bring everybody in a community together, with a partnership between businesses, the police, the local authority and other key stakeholders, such as drug and alcohol groups and homeless groups, to address and prevent crime and disorder. Membership of a Business Crime Reduction Partnershipis subscription-based for businesses. They are funded mainly by subscriptions from the member businesses, so they are self-funding. Being a member of a BCRP costs about £500 a year per premises. We are not talking about a great deal of money.

For the return on investment you get for that £500, you will be provided with the tools and services that you need to prevent yourself and the entire community being a victim of crime. BCRPs will often offer a walkie-talkie radio network in a town so that you can communicate with the other businesses around you, sharing real-time information about what is happening now to prevent crime. That is supplemented by an online software incident and intelligence reporting system, where you can report the incidents that happen in your shop. For example, in a town centre setting, if everybody reports those incidents then crime trends are spotted and that information is analysed. You will be invited to briefings and intelligence meetings, which are also attended by police and other agencies, such as probation and the other agencies that I have mentioned, with the business community providing feedback on what is happening. The BCRP will also deliver a lot of national safety priorities, such as Ask for Angela, if you know about that, which is about violence and harassment against women, safer business action days and safe spaces. They not only support the business community but do so much for community safety as well.

The data-sharing element of that links in via the online intelligence platform and the real-time sharing of information live on the radio network. When an incident happens in a store, member businesses are encouraged to report everything that happens in or near their premises, whether that is thefts, violence or abuse, prevented thefts or anti-social behaviour outside, such as street drinking and drug problems. Whatever the situation might be that affects your business premises and the perimeter, we ask for it to be reported. We then analyse this information and build up a whole picture of what is happening in the local area. Because we have community buy-in and we share this information, these people are often recognised and named, so we enable offenders to be identified at a much earlier stage than they ordinarily would be if we worked individually in silos.

We are able to cut through all that low-level crime: the business crime reduction partnership will deal with the low-level crime, build up an intelligence profile of who the most prolific offenders are, notify businesses of the most high-risk people who they really need to watch out for to enable them to prevent that crime happening again to themselves or their neighbours, and flag up with the police who the most prolific offenders are. We give the police workable crime reports that they can get a good result from. When we get that good result, we feed that straight back to the businesses so they can see that action is being taken. That in itself forms the momentum—that it is important to report and that we need to report because action is taken. It builds up the whole momentum of buy-in and engagement in the business crime reduction partnership.

Q38 The Chair: We are looking largely at shop theft and shoplifting, so this is a simple question: do shops in any of these areas regularly get involved in these partnerships? Is it the majority of them or just a few, or are they involved in other partnerships so they feel that they do not need to belong to this?

Sophie Jordan: I would say that the majority do support Business Crime Reduction Partnerships and buy into them. However, many corporates will not, as a rule, buy into Business Crime Reduction Partnerships. This is why the engagement aspect is key: if you are investing and—

The Chair: By “corporates”, are you referring to corporate shops as opposed to convenience stores?

Sophie Jordan: Absolutely—the corporate retailers.

The Chair: So convenience stores join in but the brand names—the high-street, well-known names—do not.

Sophie Jordan: A lot of high-street, well-known names do buy in but others do not.

James Lowman: On the point about involvement in partnerships by convenience stores, many will be involved in Business Crime Reduction Partnerships but some, by virtue of their location, may be less likely to be involved. Our heartland is probably outside of main centres in housing estates and villages—the sorts of areas that may not be big enough to have their own partnership. They could be part of a wider town or regional partnership—many are and, obviously, some operate in town centres—but some can feel quite isolated because they do not have that network of other businesses directly around them. That can be a barrier to involvement for some of them.

The Chair: Let me stop you there because that very neatly leads us on to the next question.

Q39 Baroness Prashar: This question is really for Sophie, but Adam may want to come in. What factors or measures need to be in place for these partnerships to operate more successfully and effectively?

Sophie Jordan: The first factor for more success in Business Crime Reduction Partnerships would be funding, because each BCRP is independent and self-funded by subscription from businesses. There is a lot of involvement and buy-in from the big corporates, as well as from the smaller shops; however, bigger towns have more resources than smaller towns and it is often the smaller towns that need more involvement. It would be really good to have that sustainability in the funding, which would help raise consistency so that we can all operate the same.

Alongside funding sustainability, regulation and governance are important. These would sit quite nicely under, for example, the Police and Crime Commissioners and the funding aspect, which would be more regulatory. If they sat under this umbrella, we could have more standardisation and governance across the UK.

Engagement is really important as well—ensuring that there is engagement throughout, from the head offices of the big corporate companies to the people on the ground. It is about ensuring that it filters all the way down from the top, with the people on the ground engaging, attending meetings and working together as a community to prevent crime; it is about them seeing not just their role in their shop but the benefits to their shop and the wider community as well.

The sharing of data is also incredibly important; that comes with the engagement aspect. It is about being confident to share, knowing that your data is secure and not being scared to share information. I think those are the main factors.

Adam Ratcliffe: Legitimisation is huge here. BCRPs have organically grown from what were often referred to as shop watches and pub watches—that is, very small schemes of a group of businesses working collaboratively to support one another. They have grown over the years. Some are still in that small system, which works well for them, but some have grown to thousands of business members.

We are still dealing with personal relationships when it comes to statutory partners. We still have our teams building relationships with individual police officers to create partnership working; then, as soon as that police officer moves on to another area, that process starts again. Our drive is to try to create legacy policies so that it does not matter which officer comes into that position—they know that there is a crime reduction partnership in operation in the area with which they work, what they can do and how they can be part of the solution. That creates an immediate start to the relationship as soon as the person is in place.

You can go into any area and speak to one officer from the police force, and they will completely buy into what we are doing. They will support it, buy into it and do everything they can. You can speak to one of their colleagues who will go, “I have no idea who you are. I do not know what you’re doing. I am not going to share any information with you. This is police data. Why would I give this to you?” They do not understand the concept around information-sharing agreements because they are not taught that at a basic level at the beginning. So there is a piece around education when new officers join the job, to understand both the incredible amount of money that goes into the private sector to address this and how it is an untapped resource that can really support the police to be more effective in what they are trying to do. If they see industry as an ally rather than someone expecting too much of them, the situation changes drastically.

We are looking for—this would be huge—the legitimisation of these third-sector, private-sector parties that are working collaboratively to try to address an issue. If the police and partners know that the BCRP is doing really good things and can work with them, joining the dots and bringing everyone together, that is a game-changer.

Q40 Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Taking a slightly different tack, I am interested in the extent to which businesses and private companies see their own responsibility in trying to prevent some of this activity—first, in trying to design out opportunities for crime in their own businesses. To what extent do your organisations support them with best practice? Secondly, to what extent do they contribute to partnerships such as the business partnerships and Pegasus and try to take a more preventive approach collectively?

We have all been in convenience stores with the very expensive alcohol on the shelf, ready to be gathered up and run out with, but there are less obvious practices that stores can institute to design out crime through a target-hardening approach. How do you see the issue of responsibility? How do they see it? What do your organisations do to support them in that?

James Lowman: As I mentioned earlier, there has been huge investment by our sector and other sectors of retail in crime prevention. Well over £300 million was invested last year in things such as CCTV. We are increasingly seeing body-worn cameras, headsets and monitoring systems.

On top of that, there is a lot of designing out of crime, the most specific and obvious thing being sight-lines through to higher-value products. There are some things that cost a bit of time but do not cost money, such as greeting every customer who comes into the store; that customer or potential thief’s recognition that they have been noticed is very important.

There are certain fundamentals. We are open long hours. We are often in areas where we do not have a lot of police presence around us. We sell products that people want—I hope, because we want to sell them. This means that we are vulnerable to that extent. Unless we shut down the stores or build them up as fortresses, there will always be a risk of some theft. Clearly, there is a massive incentive for our sector to reduce the level of theft because it is a huge cost for the business. I am sure that everyone knows this, but a myth that some of us hear occasionally is, “You claim it all back on insurance, don’t you?” Absolutely not: you do not get insured against shop theft. Those are losses straight off the bottom line of that business.

There has been an awful lot of investment. We share a lot of good practice with retailers about things like reporting, which we have talked about, designing out crime and being a good witness—that is, getting good evidence when there has been an incident and gathering it to pass to the police. A lot of good advice is being shared already. If one of my members were here receiving that question, they would probably reflect some frustration that they do not feel they have enough support from the police. They are legitimate businesses paying taxes, contributing a great deal to the economy and providing essential local services—whether that is post offices, other bill payment services, parcel services or, in some cases, pharmacies—and they need more support to be able to continue to offer those services in the community.

Sophie Jordan: For the big businesses buying into these schemes, it is their responsibility to look after themselves, just like it is our responsibility to secure our property. But you find that the same ones are investing in these schemes and paying into the likes of Pegasus and the Business Crime Reduction Partnerships. They are taking an active role. We need to get more engagement from all businesses in taking that responsibility. Business Crime Reduction Partnerships also offer a lot of training for staff working on the ground. Many will offer things such as de-escalation techniques and conflict management, as well as other broader safety techniques for the town centre. Again, it is back to engagement—making sure that everyone is fully engaged and taking it as their responsibility.

Adam Ratcliffe: Sophie just touched on an area that we did not really touch on with BCRPs: the training and upskilling element. They work on the criminology principle around the offender triangle, to remove one element in the offender-victim-location. We cannot remove the location because we want thriving high streets and shops to be bricks and mortar, so it is about focusing on the other two. We target hard and we upskill. We educate the businesses on what they can do. The National Business Crime Centre, as part of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, does amazing work pushing out best practice guidance. A lot of BCRPs will then use that as the formation of their training.

It is also about focusing on the offender and being offender-led, ID-ing the most prolific offenders and ensuring that businesses are aware of who they are. As James mentioned, one of the biggest tools that we teach is the power of hello—the engagement with offenders as they walk through the door. They know when they have been recognised and that will be a deterrent to a lot of them. You deter before they get in the door or as they are coming in. You can do that only if you are equipped with that information. That is one of the fundamental elements that the BCRPs bring: “Here are your top 10 offenders in this area. If they walk in your door, go and speak to them. Do not leave their side. Offer them a basket”. It is things like that.

It has been shown that it has an impact, but the businesses understandably have to create a balance between making money and putting products where the statistics tell them they should put them, compared to where we think they should put them to try to avoid crime. There are constant conversations around trying to find a balance there. We are not in a position to tell businesses what they should or should not do with their stock, but we can always ensure that they are given best practice, guidance and support if they have any questions.

Q41 The Chair: Can you quickly answer one element of the question that we have not really explored? Do you believe that there is a responsibility on businesses to fund these sorts of partnerships? Should businesses be funding them at all, or should it be the responsibility of the state?

James Lowman: Businesses should be playing a part in partnerships, sharing information and working with other businesses, local police and others. That is more important than the funding from businesses, frankly, although funding can be a part of that.

The Chair: I accept entirely that if they do not participate, they will not benefit. I am asking specifically whether businesses or the state should be funding schemes like that.

James Lowman: It is both—a partnership of both.

Adam Ratcliffe: Industry has demonstrated its willingness to fund initiatives if they work. Ultimately, it is about whether this will have the impact that it wants.

Sophie Jordan: I think there should be more funding from the state.

Q42 Baroness Buscombe: I have a quick question about working together and discussing how to make things better, easier and safer. A friend last evening told me that she saw someone stealing a bottle of wine and told a member of staff. My friend was then followed to her home and threatened, and a car came in. It was horrendous. Do you discuss how you deal with helping the public or making sure that, if that situation occurs, one might see that person home or whatever?

James Lowman: That is a good question. That is not a scenario you hear about a lot, although it is obviously a horrific situation. That is quite a common occurrence for colleagues in stores but less so for customers. In that situation, retailers should certainly be thinking about how they can support that customer, who has helped them. It is putting them in an uncomfortable position.

Baroness Buscombe: It is about awareness across the board, is it not?

Adam Ratcliffe: It is a question of vulnerability. Partnerships look at vulnerability as a whole because it is situationally contextual. Is it a nightclub? Is it a shop? If someone has demonstrated that they are vulnerable by the fact that they have challenged a shoplifter and might be in a vulnerable position, the staff are encouraged to support that person. As James said, it does not happen often.

Our reach to the public is minimal—we engage with our members—so that is where that difficulty lies. However, it comes back to one of your earlier points around better education on all the measures that are out there. If we talk to members of the public about things such as the Ask for Angela campaign that Sophie mentioned earlier, most are very happy to hear that something like that is in place. The public want to hear that these positive things are happening, but with radio silence they assume nothing is happening and then they hear the negative stories in the media and the press. Therefore, there is a piece here about education to upskill people as well.

Q43 Lord Henley: You talk about the benefits of various businesses taking part in schemes such as Pegasus. What is the effect on those that do not take part?

James Lowman: I have characterised some of the challenges our members face from these local offenders who commit a high volume of crime, which is often unknown. The challenge is to have those crimes reported so that those individuals can be dealt with, whether through sentencing, rehabilitation orders or whatever it might be to take them out of the cycle of reoffending.

There are also, in the retail industry as a whole, many offenders who travel from area to area across force boundaries and commit pretty organised crime. It involves people going into centres and stripping out stores on a serious and large scale. That is less directly relevant to us. Some of our members engage with Pegasus and similar cross-force initiatives.

There is always the risk that, when one set of offenders is targeted, there is a kind of knock-on effect for those who are not taking part and other offenders. In this case, some offenders will be caught as part of Pegasus who would have committed crimes in their local store or another local store during their travelling. It is good for us to have them taken out of the system, if that is the effect. In this instance, I do not fear a massive knock-on effect for the smaller stores but there is a risk that city-centre and town-centre initiatives that focus on making those places much safer could displace crime into the outlying areas. We need to think about how we deal with that.

However, there is something in the middle of that as well: more localised organised crime. We are seeing vulnerable people, often with addiction problems, going to the store, stealing to order for resale and often being exploited by the person organising it. One of the perhaps underreported and under-recognised features of the cost of living challenges is that we are not seeing loads of new people suddenly starting to steal. Some new people will be stealing but, by and large, our members report that it is the same people. However, we have seen a greater appetite to buy those stolen goods. That may be because people feel that they can turn a blind eye to a degree, even if they would not commit the primary offence of stealing from the store themselves.

We need public awareness, which we talked about a little earlier, around buying stolen goods; if you have a deal that is too good to be true, it probably is. Where has that product come from? It has probably been stolen from a legitimate retailer. Whether it is people buying in pub car parks, over the internet or from other shops, that is a serious and underdiscussed issue.

Lord Sandhurst: Are the police going after the organised receivers?

Adam Ratcliffe: That is difficult to answer, because how much they are able to go after that side of things is determined by how much they can look at the offenders. That is the problem because, at the moment, if they do not have the resources to look at the offenders then they cannot look two stages down the line. That is where private industry can support, because organisations such as ours around the country have the time and energy to look at where this stuff is going and where it is being sold. We find Instagram, Etsy and TikTok accounts being used to facilitate the selling of these products. One will find videos of people almost boasting about the level of product that they have taken from these stores. We want almost to say that we are happy to do that work, but the police need to be able to take that on and investigate further. At the moment, in terms of resources, they do not have time to do it. A lot of positives could come from going down that line, though.

James Lowman: I do not think they are doing nearly enough to investigate that. It comes back to Adam’s point about viewing the level of volume of crime in the retail industry as being just too big to get our arms around. We need to turn that around and look at it as a data resource. Using that effectively means that you will find the repeat offenders, their handlers and the people who are exploiting them, and you will then find the people who are reselling the stolen goods. All that adds up to a lot of very serious crime and very motivated criminals who could be addressed and taken out of the system and the cycle. How do we do that? I appreciate that it is not an easy thing to do, but I do not think that challenge is even being taken on in many areas at the moment.

Q44 Lord Sandhurst: But without receivers you do not have anything for the thieves.

Is facial recognition technology useful and cost efficient? Are people using it? What about the convenience stores in particular? What proportion install it now?

James Lowman: The numbers using it are still relatively low. We are certainly talking about sub-10% of stores using it, and the number is probably quite a bit lower. Some groups are using it. Some individual retailers use it, and many of them report good results. When it works for them, it works because of the recognition; they can match against the database of other local offenders who are part of that scheme. They get a ping on their phone, their colleagues or the retailers get a ping, and they can then engage with that customer as they come in.

Lord Sandhurst: So it is proactive.

James Lowman: As the person comes into the store, they are told about that and they can then engage.

Lord Sandhurst: And there is after the event, too.

James Lowman: One of the challenges with the system I have described is that it leads to an interaction between those two people. That can result in the would-be thief seeing that they have been recognised, realising that the store is probably a harder target and leaving—and, in reality, probably going somewhere else. None the less, they have left the store. That can work.

It can also bring forward the moment and the trigger for the confrontation, which we know can lead to serious issues. With the right training and in the right context in the store, there are members who report it being very successful. I do not think it is simply a case of installing that system and immediately the crime goes down and there are no further consequences. It needs a lot of management.

For the police, certainly, facial recognition can have a massive impact on all the challenges that we have talked about of reporting and data gathering. It makes that a lot slicker and more effective for identifying persistent repeat offenders.

Adam Ratcliffe: There is such nervousness in that industry around the legalities and the human rights element, because with live facial recognition you are scanning everyone, so you are processing somebody’s data as they walk into the store, even if they are not an offender. So there are concerns about accuracy.

Lord Sandhurst: It is identifying people who have been in and stolen. There is no issue there.

Adam Ratcliffe: No. The other side of that is what a lot of partnerships do, which is to use the technology to run the information that is coming in against the database of known offenders—these people have already offended, which is why they are in a database—and afterwards work collaboratively with the police to go after those offenders, knowing that they are offenders. That is the difference.

There is so much nervousness about live recognition that a lot of retailers are not willing even to entertain it until a lot further down the line.

Lord Sandhurst: But using it simply to identify someone you have seen taking a bottle of wine and rushing out—

Adam Ratcliffe: That is where it is incredibly valuable, because it allows us to streamline that investigation work and to present more comprehensive evidence to the police to make them more efficient.

The Chair: Let us take that a bit further. Baroness Meacher has a question.

Q45 Baroness Meacher: Perhaps initially this is just to Sophie. What factors in relation to technology more generally are important to a retailer’s capacity to deal with shoplifting?

Sophie Jordan: This goes to the reporting of crime with the technology. One of the main problems faced is the system the police use to gather CCTV. It is now done via an online electronic version, so a retailer will be expected to submit the CCTV electronically via a link. However, a lot of retailers do not have the capacity for this on their systems. Some do not even have internet access or computer systems in their stores. That is one of the main challenges.

Baroness Meacher: What is the importance of this technology to small businesses, for example? You say that they are at quite a disadvantage. How do you see that?

James Lowman: Certainly some of the most impactful technology comes with a high price tag, as you would expect; I am thinking particularly of things like monitoring technology.

But as that develops further and hopefully the price comes down, there is the potential, if you are using the systems, to recognise certain behaviours and actions in-store and then target the data capture around those, and to package that for the police automatically. It is taking down all these manual reporting processes, which at the moment, as I described earlier, are really laborious and dissuading a lot of retailers from doing it. We still think they should, but it does dissuade them from doing it.

Identifying the behaviours, integrating the system to link it to sales data, and the ability to track everyone who has been in the store is much more automated. It links those systems together and packages the data for the police in the most effective way possible so that they can access that data without all the laborious, manual sifting through, which we know takes them a lot of time. They should do it, but it does take a lot of time.

Adam Ratcliffe: That is huge, because the onerous expectation on the police of the level of investigation for low-level crime is a barrier, because you are taking an officer out of action to do all these things. The technology is there to automate a lot of this work.

The knowledge and expertise in the industry is huge. There are people out there who can do their own statements and submit evidence, and put packages together. If we can get 80% of that done and then present it to a police officer who then decides whether to charge or to present it to the CPS, that is far more efficient than a police officer physically having to do these things, often dealing with retail staff who are working on their own in a store for however many hours.

Baroness Meacher: Those were very helpful responses from all three witnesses. Thank you.

Q46 Lord Bach: This may be a time when public confidence in the police is not as high as it should be. It may be much lower than it really ought to be, given what has happened to the police in the last number of years. Do policing and business partnerships have public buy-in, and is it important that they should? We have heard evidence that those partnerships, certainly recently, have been working much better than they did before. Is that your and your members’ experience, and what about the future?

Adam Ratcliffe: We have many examples of it working and of good news stories. One of our primary focuses is to try to promote that in order to improve people’s confidence in the police, because the police are doing some wonderful work behind the scenes but are often not very good at talking about it.

What we do is not complicated; it is a very simple procedure. As an example, some of our areas will create a top 10 list. That list is presented to the local police, who will then know the top 10 offenders committing business crime and can go out operationally and deal with it. They tell us, “We’ve arrested, we’ve charged, we’ve put in prison”. We then tell the businesses that this has happened, and the businesses say, “That’s brilliant. We’ll keep doing this”. There is that positive reinforcement.

The public side is so difficult because we do not have that access to the public, but obviously the people who work in the stores are members of the public; they are from the local community. Their reassurance, faith and confidence in the police is vital, so the more engagement we get with these partnerships that demonstrate that positive work and those positive outcomes, the more we will increase public confidence. It is the staff who work in the stores, who live locally and explain it to their families and friends. The more that happens, the more we can start promoting this work and making the information more widely available.

Sophie Jordan: As Adam said, a lot of people who work in shops are members of the community. Something like one in 10 people in the UK works in retail, so if we can get the buy-in and confidence in the police of people who work in retail, we will go a long way to develop that for the wider population as well. It is all about feeding back the good-news stories. Too often, we focus on the negative, so if we can feed back when we have positive results, that will go a long way to help rebuild public confidence.

James Lowman: Often, communities can feel quite powerless in the face of seeing a lot of crime. Where partnerships are effective, that can give them a lot of confidence. So the confidence and the support will be based entirely on the success of those partnerships and on communicating that well.

The Chair: Thank you all very much. May I, on behalf of all of us, thank you for the work that you are doing? It is enormously valuable. Thank you for the evidence you have given. As I said at the beginning, if there are further things that you think we need to learn and which you wish you had said, please get in touch with us as quickly as possible.

We will write a report that will contain a number of recommendations to government and various other bodies, such as the police, for what we want them to do, so if you have any suggestions for what you would like to be put in our report—obviously, the committee will decide whether we will include them or not—please feel free to put them forward.

On behalf of the entire committee, therefore, a huge thank you. We look forward to hearing a bit more from you over the next week or so.

Examination of witnesses

Professor Emmeline Taylor and Paul Gerrard.

Q21             The Chair: Welcome to this meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, continuing our investigation into shoplifting. We are delighted to have before us our first couple of witnesses today. I would be grateful if they could introduce themselves and the organisations for which they work.

Professor Emmeline Taylor: I am professor of criminology at City, University of London.

Paul Gerrard: I am campaigns, public affairs and board secretariat director at the Co-op Group.

Q22             The Chair: Professor Taylor, over the last few weeks we have seen a huge amount of media coverage about shoplifting. We know that the level of recorded incidents of it does not represent the true picture, because a lot of it goes unrecorded. Nevertheless, there has been a huge surge in the amount of recorded incidents of shoplifting, and there is growing concern among the public that the police are unable to deal with, and perhaps not even interested in dealing with, this issue. Can you explain your thoughts about how we got to this situation and what is going on?

Professor Emmeline Taylor: You are quite right that police-recorded incidents of shop theft are at their highest-ever level since comparable records began over 20 years ago. In the last 12 months, they have recorded approximately 440,000 incidents of shop theft. It is fair to say that that is a drop in the ocean compared to what the retail sector is experiencing. Illustrating that, the British Retail Consortium estimates that there are almost 17 million incidents of shop theft, which suggests that less than 3% of shop thefts are currently being reported. This creates various issues for policing.

The question of how we got here is obviously a big one. Shop theft is a useful way to assess the health of a nation, because the underlying root causes of it are typically social factors: there might be poverty, homelessness, mental health issues, or drug addiction, which we know is a huge driver of shop theft. We know that, over a decade, austerity measures have withdrawn vital services required by individuals who might be suffering one or several of those factors.

Fast forward to the pandemic­: it amplified these issues, so the perfect storm has been created. That is why we are now seeing what I describe as a tsunami of shop theft across the UK.

Q23             The Chair: We will pick up on some of that in subsequent questions. Of course, we are interested to hear what you have to say about your argument, Mr Gerrard, that only 3% of shop theft—shoplifting—is recorded. Interestingly, Professor Taylor, you used the term “shop theft”, whereas our inquiry is into “shoplifting”. What is your understanding of the difference between shoplifting and shop theft?

Professor Emmeline Taylor: It is important to look at the vernacular used around this particular crime type. “Theft” is defined in the Theft Act 1968 as the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention to permanently deprive the other of it. Shoplifting is a form of theft covered by that law, but there are some differences in how it is prosecuted and sentenced. I particularly draw attention to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which essentially downgraded what is now known as “shoplifting”—or “low-value shoplifting”—to theft from a shop of goods valued under £200. That is where a key difference is.

“Shoplifting” is used by the Home Office and the police when they record crime to differentiate it from other types of theft and where it might occur. But the word is unhelpful—it still holds connotations of being trivial, petty and somehow victimless—so I prefer the term “theft from a shop”. More broadly, that sits under the category of retail crime, which covers theft, burglary robbery, violence and abuse, including hate motivated incidents, vandalism, criminal damage, and anti-social behaviour. We are increasingly seeing this in the retail space.

The Chair: To be clear, if I go into a shop and steal a tin of beans, and someone else goes into a high-tech store and steals a computer, you are saying that those two crimes would be treated differently?

Professor Emmeline Taylor: Yes, if the value of the computer was more than £200.

The Chair: Is there any difference in the figures that suggests that the police are more interested in, and take more action on, the second case—the shop theft of a higher-value thing—than lower-value things?

Professor Emmeline Taylor: It is important to say that Section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 was introduced with good intentions. The Sentencing Council identified that over 97% of shop theft incidents are of a value less than £200, so the idea was that the police could deal with these incidents swiftly, and the intention that they could issue fixed penalty notices. But, unfortunately, in the way the law was utilised, it was almost a shorthand for whether the police would then take action. Many offenders I speak to in my work suggest that they have licence to steal as long as they do not surpass the £200 limit.

Q24             The Chair: If you want to write to us with more detail on those issues, I know the committee would find that helpful.

There is one other area of potential confusion. I am looking, for example, at a recent article in the Times newspaper on these issues. It spends a lot of time describing the successes of Operation Opal in finding examples of shop theft. The article describes how Opal is funded by Project Pegasus, which we have been particularly looking at. We are a little confused about the relationship between Opal and Operation Pegasus. I would be grateful if you could clarify that for us.

Professor Emmeline Taylor: Your confusion is understandable, because the article you referenced is incorrect, if that is what it says. Project Pegasus is a strand of Opal. There were initially five strands to Opal, all dealing with serious and organised acquisitive crime. The unit is the responsibility of the National Police Chiefs’ Council—the NPCC—and Project Pegasus introduced a sixth strand of serious acquisitive crime: organised retail crime.

Project Pegasus sits under Opal—that is the structure—and, moving forward, it is easier to refer just to Opal rather than to Pegasus as a separate strand. It is evolving so that it is now fully subsumed within that structure. Project Pegasus is a collaboration between retailers and the police—it is co-funded. More than 15 retailers have now committed funds for it to be almost a trial for the first two years, to scope the degree of severity of organised criminal networks targeting the retail sector across the UK.

The Chair: I am sorry to go into the detail but, just so I am clear, if Opal is a project looking at organised crime and Pegasus, as you described it, is looking within that strand at shop theft, is Pegasus therefore looking only at the element of shop theft or shoplifting that relates to organised crime?

Professor Emmeline Taylor: I am not sure I fully understand the question. Pegasus has come about to look specifically at organised crime in the retail sector.

The Chair: But does that mean that the work of Pegasus does not look at the low-value crime of theft in shops?

Professor Emmeline Taylor: Apologies. I fully understand your question now. Operation Pegasus, and by extension Opal, has a very clear definition of “serious organised acquisitive crime”. A key factor in that definition is that it is a network of individuals who operate across two or more police forces. So they are looking for networks, mobility and that cross-jurisdictional activity.

The Chair: To be absolutely clear, Pegasus, with its co-funding and all the arrangements that we understand, does not have an interest in the low level—the theft of my tin of beans, for example.

Professor Emmeline Taylor: Arguably no, but I imagine that some actors in those networks may at times steal from a store to a value that is less than £200. That particular theft would form part of a series of crimes, but they would not look specifically at lower value. The key definition, I think, is around that multi-jurisdictional action.

The Chair: I know we want to pursue that in a bit more detail. I turn to Baroness Buscombe.

Q25             Baroness Buscombe: That is quite a depressing start. When I started my law studies 1,000 years ago, I was taught that we were all equal before the law, but clearly we are not. That is something that the public have become more and more aware of and taken advantage of; I hope you agree.

We are in a state now where, as the British attitudinal surveys of around 2016-17 said, people think that low-level crime in this country is absolutely fine as long as it is not of Philip Green proportions. I think that was the terminology.

I would like you to describe a bit more what we really mean by organised crime. You have already begun to do that very clearly, so thank you. What is the 80:20 rule, for example? What is the “lazy journalism” that you referenced recently on the BBC’s “Breakfast” show—I call it lazy journalism—where the assumption is that it is all about the cost of living. You referenced some of the social factors, but, actually, people are taking advantage in large degree of what they feel is a lawless situation in our villages, our towns and our cities. Then organised crime is saying, “Hey, this is ripe for us”.

Professor Emmeline Taylor: Absolutely. I agree with the synopsis that you have given.

I will first talk to the contribution about organised crime that we are seeing. I will briefly refer back to the definition that Operation Pegasus uses. A key bit is that it is a series of offences impacting on two or more police forces. However, we know that a large proportion of offenders operate in one police force area. We could refer to them as local prolific offenders—these are the individuals who shop workers will probably know by sight; they might even know them by name or know where they reside.

Many of these individuals have reached a scale of activity and established pre-arranged networks of buyers or fences for the stolen goods they steal that can only be described as organised, yet they operate in only one police force area. So there is a difficulty there in the attention that is being given to these different stratums of organised criminals.

It is very difficult to confidently assess the relative contribution of organised crime; I would go back to how I started, talking about the chronic underreporting that we have in this country. It means that we do not have visibility on who exactly is committing these offences. There have been some estimates, however. The Centre for Social Justice estimates that 70% of prolific local organised criminals are stealing to fund a drug addiction. So we have some figures there.

Some of the difficulty goes back to the definitional issues. If I may, I will elaborate with a quick illustration of an individual—a drug-affected prolific offender operating in Manchester. He is homeless. He is being housed by a local woman who provides him with accommodation and somewhere for him to safely administer his drugs of choice. Each morning, she issues him with a shopping list of goods to steal that day. He takes them back to her property. She contacts her established network of buyers, which she found through an online marketplace initially. They, in turn, give her shopping lists for her to pass on.

Just to show the scale and severity of this, a typical daily drug addiction bill for somebody is around £300. When you steal property and sell it on, you typically get a third of that. So they need to steal approximately £900 a day and have an established network of buyers to shift that and translate those goods into money to purchase drugs. This can only be described as organised, yet it is not meeting those definitional thresholds. Those are the figures that we are looking at. It equates to almost half a million pounds a year, and that is just one individual operating in Manchester.

Baroness Buscombe: Paul, would you like to contribute to this part of the discussion?

Paul Gerrard: Certainly. In the Co-op, we run 2,500 stores across the country and supply another 5,000 independent stores. In our own 2,500 stores, we have seen crime go up by 44% over the past year to 18 months. Within that, we have seen a rise of 35% in violence and abuse. In our stores, that level of crime is 1,000 incidents every day. That is the highest level we have ever seen. Levels of abuse are at the highest level we have ever seen. Violence has dipped slightly in 2024, but it is still at a very high level.

Emmeline paints a really important point there. There have always been people who have stolen to make ends meet. That has always happened and it continues to happen. You could argue that it might happen more in a cost of living crisis, fine, but that is not what is driving the 44% increase. What is driving the 44% increase is people who are stealing to order in huge volumes. People are coming into our store with wheelie bins and builders bags to steal the entire confectionery section, the entire spirits section, the entire meat section.

The point about these people—Emmeline has painted the picture perfectly—is that they are stealing to order. If one of my colleagues gets in the way, they will not say, “Oh, sorry”, and walk out. There will be a threat, there will be a violent threat. There might be a knife. There might be a syringe. Colleagues have been attacked with a medieval mace. Colleagues have lost an eye. Colleagues have miscarried. What comes with what Emmeline described is a level of violence, abuse and threat that nobody in retail—and I have colleagues who have been in retail for 40 years—has ever seen before.

I just want to paint one last picture of this. We have had to move colleagues from their home, because they have been followed from the store to their home and threatened at their home. These are people running a store that, during the pandemic, was the only place people could go. When we were all told to stay at home and keep safe, my colleagues were in those stores making sure that people could buy food and water. They are being followed home at times and threatened at home. What Emmeline described is absolutely right.

I talk to my colleagues about this on a weekly basis, and the stories they tell. I am a former law enforcement officer—I worked in Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise for 20 years and was a law enforcement officer for 10 years—so this is not an unfamiliar world to me, but the idea that my colleagues are facing this is just remarkable.

The Chair: Mr Gerrard, let us take the example of one of your colleagues working in one of the stores and going through the experience that you have just described. What does the Co-op do about it?

Paul Gerrard: Our view is that keeping colleagues safe is our first priority and it is our responsibility. It depends on what happens. Every day, hundreds of my colleagues will be abused and threatened. We spend money to keep colleagues safe in the store; we spend four times the sector average to keep colleagues safe in the store. If an incident happens, we take a number of measures. The colleague will be looked after; they will get counselling and have time off if they need it. We will increase the security of that store, if needed, or we will close the store. We will do whatever we need to do to keep colleagues safe, because stock can be replaced; colleagues cannot. 

The Chair: I am grateful for that. The figures are alarming, if you are saying that 400 colleagues a day are abused at some level.

Paul Gerrard: Hundreds of colleagues.

The Chair: That is really concerning. The interesting thing is that nothing in your answer to my question on what the Co-op does made any reference to reporting this to the police.

Paul Gerrard: We will report all serious levels of crime.

The Chair: I just want to be clear. What definition of “serious” is there here? A colleague is threatened—

Paul Gerrard: If a colleague is threatened, that will invariably be reported to the police. There is an interesting question, and I am sure the committee will come to this, about the relationship between the reporting of crime to the police and the police response.

We need to be clear, and Emily referred to this, that police data in this area is pretty poor. We made a freedom of information request last year of all the police forces. That told us that when they reported a crime—violence, abuse, large-scale theft—the police in Q1 2023 did not turn up on 70% of occasions. Let me give you an example. One of my colleagues, not very far from this place, was suffering an armed robbery: three masked men came in and jumped behind the kiosk with knives. She reported it to the police. The last time she reported it, she was told by the police, “Look, are they still in the store?”. “No”. “In that case, don’t ring again. Just ring 101”. 101 is the non-emergency number for an armed robbery.

So we absolutely do report. I think things have changed, and we may come on to that. The point is that if the police are not turning up, the confidence that my colleagues have to report incidents to the police diminishes, and their willingness to do so diminishes.

I will leave you with one last comment, if I may, and then I will be quiet. We deploy undercover guards who are highly trained through our security contractor. They operate undercover and will apprehend individuals in store who are attacking colleagues or doing large-scale theft. They will then detain them, make a citizen’s arrest and call the police. Until October last year, even though we had the individual in our custody, the police did not turn up to complete their arrest in 80% of occasions. That means that we let the individual go.

Things have changed. I hope I can say that. I think you heard from Chief Constable Blakeman, who has made a real difference in this space. But I guess the question is: do we report it? Yes, we do. Have colleagues for a long time felt confident that it will do any good? No.

The Chair: Clearly, that is very disturbing. You have given the example of being advised to ring 101 for an armed robbery and so on, which we are all horrified about; I am pleased to hear you say that there have been some improvements subsequently. However, you say that in 80% of cases where you have apprehended someone the police are not turning up, which is extraordinarily disturbing. If there are more examples like that, it would be very helpful to the committee to have them. We would be very grateful.

Q26             Lord Henley: Professor Taylor, can we go back to the retail crime action plan? Can you explain the key findings and recommendations of your recent research, including the research commissioned by the Co-op about how retail crime is affecting businesses?

Professor Emmeline Taylor: I will speak mostly in reference to a report that I published in January entitled Stealing with Impunity, which outlines what I argue has effectively been the decriminalisation of shop theft in recent years. I will also draw upon other research and reports that I have produced and submitted to the committee.

Paul has already spoken to some of the impacts. There are two main impacts. The first and foremost effect upon businesses absolutely has to be the impact on staff welfare—their physical welfare and their mental health. In 2019, I launched a report, entitled It’s Not Part of the Job, which documented escalating violence, verbal abuse and hate-motivated crimes directed at shop workers in the UK. When I launched that report in the House of Commons, I talked of how shocked I was at the level of violence that was being experienced, but also its relatively hidden nature, because it was hidden behind this vernacular of shoplifting, as we have described already. Some of these attacks are physical and severe, and in some cases can have fatal consequences.

The report also revealed the cumulative harm of experiencing aggression, threats and being witness to high levels of crime—for example, somebody coming in and repeatedly stealing with impunity and seemingly with very little consequences. So I documented the panic attacks, the anxiety, even the post-traumatic stress disorder that some staff were experiencing simply by trying to serve their communities in some of these hardest-hit stores.

The main trigger for those violent attacks is somebody stealing but there are other flashpoints in selling regulated or licensed products. Alcohol can be a key trigger; if somebody is already inebriated, it is illegal to serve them with additional alcohol, or to deny sales to underage individuals. Sometimes, sadly, there appears to be no trigger at all, and shop workers are just bearing the brunt of the social issues that I have already outlined. The BRC, the British Retail Consortium, estimates that there are 1,300 incidents a day against shop workers currently. It is quite shocking.

The second main impact on businesses, aside from the challenge to operating safely, is the difficulty in some locations to operate profitably. Nearly £2 billion was lost to customer theft last year, almost double the previous year. This is an issue that is escalating in severity. Add to that the costs of crime prevention and security, and some businesses are simply no longer viable. So we are seeing some stores permanently close. That in itself is of concern. We know that the high street is already struggling, but we are also seeing the emergence of food deserts in some more remote locations. A food desert is defined as where members of a community cannot access fresh food, medicines and toiletries at an affordable price within a reasonable distance.

We also know, as an extension of that, that boarded-up shops go on to attract anti-social behaviour and create a downward spiral for those communities.

Those are the main issues that I have identified that affect businesses. Of course, there are other more peripheral impacts. The report that I mentioned, Stealing with Impunity, published earlier this year, laid out a 10-point action plan. It has 10 key recommendations that span legislative changes, recommendations for policing and recommendations for the courts and sentencing. I will pull out some of those rather than go through all 10.

In terms of legislation, I have already spoken to Section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. I believe that that needs to be repealed, and I was delighted to see that that was committed to in the King’s Speech earlier this year. Second was the introduction of a standalone offence of assaulting a shop worker who is performing their duty serving the community. Again, that has been committed to by the current Government.

In terms of the stolen goods markets, which I have referenced before, we spend a huge amount of time focusing on the individual who commits a theft but far less thinking about where those billions of pounds of goods are actually ending up. We know that some of this is criminal exploitation. The scenario that I painted earlier of the woman essentially employing a vulnerable, drug addicted offender to steal on her behalf would, I believe, count as criminal exploitation. So we need more regulation of e-commerce online marketplaces. People can operate fairly invisibly on those using fake names and addresses. We need to encourage the e-commerce sites to take better action. There are ready examples from other countries—a reference here to USA and its INFORM Consumers Act, where action has been taken to disrupt those established stolen goods markets.

In addition, we need to look to the retail crime action plan. It is certainly a step in the right direction, but when you drill down into it it is very difficult to measure police forces’ success or the way they are operating within that action plan. There have been some audits, but they are time-consuming because of the way these crimes are recorded. It is sometimes very difficult to measure performance. We have talked about whether the police attend a violent attack on a shop worker. Currently, it is almost impossible for the police to identify that that attack took place on retail premises, so I make recommendations on how we can bring that visibility to the fore in order to then monitor the KPIs under the retail crime action plan.

I will draw your attention to one more recommendation. I am aware that it is quite a drawn-out one. On police recorded crime, if retailers reported all those estimated 17 million incidents it would quadruple police recorded crime overnight. I do not believe that that is necessarily the right answer. We can look to another high-volume crime type—fraud—and how that has been dealt with. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau was established back in 2006, and similar structures could be put in place for the reporting and triaging of retail crimes by replicating it and creating a national retail crime intelligence bureau.

Q27             Lord Henley: You talk about a new offence of assaulting a shop worker. Why would that make a difference when assaulting a shop worker is an offence anyway?

Professor Emmeline Taylor: That is absolutely right. Some law can sometimes be symbolic. It would send a clear message to shop workers that they should have the confidence to report. We know that underreporting is such an issue. It also removes the façade of shoplifting, because it would then be its own stand-alone offence. It would not only encourage victims to come forward but send a clear message to perpetrators that this behaviour will not be tolerated.

The Chair: I am grateful to Lord Henley for that follow-up question but, frankly, it seems certainly to me—I wonder whether you would agree—that there is very little point in this symbolism, as you rightly described it. It will hardly give confidence to a shop worker to come forward if, in 80% of the cases where somebody has actually been apprehended in a shop—so the definition of where it took place is clear—and there are witnesses to what has happened, the police do not even turn up.

Paul Gerrard: There are a couple of points here. We should come back to the 80% figure, because it has significantly improved since the retail crime action plan. Whether the law makes a difference is a really good question. I gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament four years ago. Scotland has had a stand-alone offence since 2022. As a result, the response rate in Scotland to crimes of violence against shop workers is six times the response rate here. In Scotland, 60% of reported incidents of violence against a shop worker result in arrest. In England and Wales, it is less than 10%. So it works.

The Chair: That is very helpful.

Q28             Lord Sandhurst: I have a short question for the professor. Theft coupled with violence or the threat of violence is robbery, and if it is robbery, the sentence is very severe. I cannot remember it now, but it is high—

Professor Emmeline Taylor: Yes, absolutely.

Lord Sandhurst: —and if the police charged with robbery every time there is the threat of violence, it might have quite an impact. You do not need special offences for shop workers: it is robbery.

Professor Emmeline Taylor: You are absolutely right. At times there is confusion around whether a crime is a theft, a burglary or a robbery. It is sometimes about how the call handler hears it: “Where are you?”; “I am in the Co-op”; “Oh, it’s a shoplifting incident”, and then immediately, going back to the connotations of shop theft, “Oh, it’s somebody stealing bits of machines”. You are absolutely right; it would be robbery.

Q29             Baroness Prashar: My question is about partnerships. You are probably aware that long-standing partnerships involving retailers and others have been established to combat retail crime. What types of partnership have been most successful, and what has made them so successful?

Paul Gerrard: If I take that first, and then, I am sure, Emily can add to it. I said that our view in the Co-op is that the responsibility to keep shops and shop workers safe is for the business. That is the first priority and the first responsibility. The reality is that businesses cannot fix this on their own and nor can the police, which is why partnerships are so important.

We have talked about Operation Pegasus for organised crime groups. The Co-op is one of the funders of Pegasus. In addition, we have 13 different partnerships across the UK with different police forces in different regions. We see from those that working together, where the Co-op can share intelligence and information with the police on both reported and non-reported incidents, allows the police to target these individuals—the repeat offenders that Emmeline described—because they are not just targeting shops; they will be involved in other activity that the police are interested in.

We first started this about four years ago, with Operation Synergy in Nottinghamshire, where we provided all our risk information and reported information to the police in packages. They worked through it, identified hotspots and pursued those individuals. That was the basis of the 13 partnerships we now have. We work with the NBCS—the National Business Crime Solution—and the Safer Business Network. I believe the next panel includes the director of that organisation.

Over the last 12 to 18 months, we have seen the police’s willingness to engage in those partnerships shift significantly since the retail crime action plan in particular and the work that Chief Constable Blakeman has done. If we look at our partnerships over the first seven months of this year, we see a 200% increase in the number of offenders that the police have managed and a 250% increase in prison sentences. I can provide all this information to the committee.

We now see that partnerships work because the police are more interested. That 80% figure is horrific. Since October 2023, when we detain someone in our stores and ring for police support, the police now turn up in 65% of times. It was a 20% turnout and 80% not, but now it is 65%. When the police want to be involved and tackle the issues, and so do businesses, you get the kind of partnerships that the Co-op has.

The one other callout I would make is that where Business Crime Reduction Partnerships work really well—so, thinking of Leeds or Southampton, with West Yorkshire Police and Hampshire Constabulary—people are involved in helping the police to understand our data and help us to package it for them. That is where you get fantastic outcomes, with offenders targeted and managed. What comes out of that could be prison sentences, but it could be rehab or restorative justice. A range of measures can be taken, but the police have to turn up. They are now turning up and working with us in those partnerships.

You are absolutely right: partnerships are how you tackle this, and how you give confidence to the retail sector to report crime.

The Chair: Thank you for agreeing to write this up in more detail.

Professor Emmeline Taylor: I chair the national standards board for the Business Crime Reduction Partnerships, and I believe they hold great promise for providing local intelligence gathering, a deterrence capacity on our high streets, and a rapid response where they see vandalism, anti-social behaviour, street drinking. The real strength in these partnerships is that they prevent crime in the first place and, where they see it, they can prevent it from escalating.

The national standards board has done a huge amount of work over the last two years to develop the national standards and create a really robust accreditation scheme. However, it is still voluntary for the BCRPs to go through that accreditation. I would like to see more commitment from PCCs—police and crime commissioners—to drive this accreditation for the BCRPs operating within their vicinities.

I would like to see them elevated and having more support. Many operate on a shoestring despite the huge amount of activity that they perform on behalf of the retail sector, the police and the security sector.

Baroness Prashar: I just want to reiterate that if you can let us have the information that we suggested but also give us a bit more information on the things you would like to see to get the partnerships improving—the things you were listing towards the end, Professor Taylor, were very helpful—that would be extremely helpful.

The Chair: Those recommendations can be included in our report in due course.

Q30             Lord Tope: Can you explain how Pegasus is different from the other partnerships, and in what way it provides any added value? If I could link on to that, it is very nearly a year exactly since it was launched. How is it doing?

Paul Gerrard: The key difference with Pegasus is that the 13 partnerships we have—in fact, we launched one with the Met last week and we have one in Kent coming up—are specific to a geography. It could be Hampshire, or it could be Leeds city centre for West Yorkshire. Pegasus looks at criminal organisations that operate across force boundaries and across geographies, which is necessary. That alone will not tackle the issue, though. It will tackle a part of it but, as Professor Taylor outlined, there are local, single-force groups and individuals. So operating across forces is the important part.

How is it going? We were in an update meeting on Friday. We are pretty pleased with how it is going. There are, I think, 15 retailers, with one of them funding it. I do would not want to go into too much detail at this point, for reasons you can understand, but we have a number of cases with them, all operating over more than 10 force boundaries and involving dozens of offenders and offences for tens of thousands of pounds. They are progressing those and we are confident that they are going to get somewhere.

If they did not do that work, I am not sure who would be tackling those. The difference is their ability to tackle people who work across boundaries. We are a national business. We do not operate on force boundaries. So we need somewhere where they can help us across a national patch.

Professor Emmeline Taylor: Picking up on how it is progressing, I also sit on the steering committee for Project Pegasus. It has been four months since it first began taking referrals from the retail sector of expected organised criminal groups targeting individual retailers. It is in the public domain. It recently produced some figures on the early activity, and it has identified more than 150 individuals who are linked to organised retail crime and facilitated more than 23 arrests of what they define as high-harm offenders.

This demonstrates that the scoping exercise they initially set out to do has clearly revealed that there are networks. Organised criminal gangs are targeting the retail sector across the UK. Picking up on the earlier point from Baroness Buscombe, this is seen as a soft option for some organised criminals who are playing on the presumption that this is purely the cost of living crisis. There is a very deliberate targeting of the UK retail sector. Some of these individuals are from outside the UK and are targeting the retail sector here because it is perceived as relatively soft and lucrative.

Q31             The Chair: Sticking with the various schemes and partnerships that we have been discussing, it would be useful if you could quickly tell us whether there are experiences internationally from which we can learn. If that is the case, would you be kind enough to write to us because we do not have time to go into them in detail? In a very quick response, is there stuff happening in other countries that we could learn from?

Professor Emmeline Taylor: Absolutely. It would go beyond the time that we have here to outline those.

One of the key things in relation to stolen goods, as I mentioned earlier, is the INFORM Consumers Act in the USA, which is showing great promise in disrupting those online marketplaces for stolen goods. We can also look to Scotland and Australia, which have introduced a stand-alone offence for attacking a shop worker while they are performing a duty. I would be happy to write to the committee with those various examples.

The Chair: That would be very good. One of the things that we are quite good at in this country, though, is facial recognition. Let us turn to that.

Q32             Lord Sandhurst: I should declare that I chair the executive committee of the Society of Conservative Lawyers and practised at the Bar for 45 years.

What role, if any, does facial recognition camera work play at the moment? What role could it usefully play in tackling shoplifting? Obviously, it has a retrospective effect, but I wonder whether it might also have a pre-emptive effect in identifying that there is a gang in the area. Over to you. Perhaps Mr Gerrard can go first.

Paul Gerrard: From our own experience—obviously, Emmeline has a much broader experience—we do not use facial recognition in a real-time sense. If someone walks in and it clicks for identification, we do not use it. There are some businesses that do, but we do not.

We do use facial recognition when we report crime. We will provide an evidence pack, and that will include CCTV imagery, bodycam imagery or whatever it may be; that is all provided to the police. Our understanding is that some police forces will take that imagery and automatically check it against the police national database and the police national computer system. I know that south Wales does that really well. We did a trial with the Met but, as I understand it, it is not common practice in police forces to automatically check the images against the police national database. I think it should be. We have seen in south Wales that it really helps, and we saw in what we did with Sussex and other places that it really helps.

Lord Sandhurst: In what respect does it help in south Wales? What is the difference?

Paul Gerrard: They will take the evidence pack and any imagery and run it automatically, and they identify people. Guess what? When they identify people, yes, they know who that individual in the Co-op was, but they also work out that the police are interested in them for other reasons. So it really helps.

I want to make one last point before Emmeline comes in. We do not use live facial recognition at the minute, and we have no plans to do so, because we cannot really see what helpful intervention it would drive. If it says to you, “That is somebody who’s going to shoplift”, we know that if a colleague goes to intervene, what will happen is at best abuse but more likely will be violence. So we do not see what helpful intervention it drives. The only database that really will do this for you is the police national database, not a locally created one. So I am not sure what database it is being checked against.

Lastly, if you log into the police national database, you could be on that for any number of reasons, none of which have anything to do with being in a shop. Therefore, I think that there are ethical reasons that we would want to think through.

Professor Emmeline Taylor: Paul has alluded to this, but it is really important to be clear about the different types of facial recognition and how it is used. It is not a homogenous category. There are different suppliers who have different algorithms, and it is applied in different ways. You have live facial recognition cameras that are focused on a specific area, and as people pass through that area their images are streamed directly to the system and compared to a watchlist. That could be the police national database. The former Policing Minister suggested extending that to the passport database, which is not without controversy and must be publicly debated. But that is how live facial recognition works, and that has been the most controversial use of it by the police and other sectors.

You then have retrospective facial recognition. It is used after the event as part of a criminal investigation, and images are typically supplied from CCTV, mobile phones, dashcams, doorbells, et cetera. Those images are then compared against images of people taken on arrest to identify a suspect—again, this watchlist of individuals.

A third category is termed “facial intelligence”. This is where you might not have a watchlist or an individual has yet to be identified as suspicious or as having committed a criminal activity. That is useful; it can pick up repeat visits. Thinking about the retail sector, if an individual is visiting multiple Boots stores all around the country but has never been convicted, it could flag that this is an unusual type of behaviour not typical of everyday consumers. It is also useful if somebody were to be planning an attack and to pick up on any reconnaissance activity. So there are those three different types.

In the 2023 retail crime action plan, there was a challenge by the former Policing Minister for police to double their use of facial recognition checks against the PND, and his intention was to radically increase the database of comparable images by drawing upon other databases such as the passport one, as I mentioned.

It is really important in the context of this debate to think about the legislative framework around facial recognition. There is no question that AI-driven biometric surveillance can be intrusive to everyday members of the public and customers, but similarly there is no question that this could be an effective tool in identifying prolific repeat and organised criminals, but it must be done ethically in a privacy-first way. I should mention that, in 2023, the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill suggested removing the role of the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, a much-needed role at this time as we move into more surveillance and biometric capabilities in retail, and more broadly in society. My recommendation is that we need a code of practice on how facial recognition can and should be used in various sectors.

The Chair: That is very helpful.

Q33             Lord Bach: This is slightly different and goes back to the police. You mentioned, Professor, the effect that austerity had on a number of those who commit these offences and how important an issue that was. Of course, austerity affected the police hugely, too. Two of us here have been Police and Crime Commissioners, actually. In the number of occasions when we had long meetings in which we debated the issues that we have been discussing this morning, we found there was just not the resource to do as much as the police wanted to.

So the expression that “the police do not want to”—not one used by either of you—is completely false, in my experience anyway. They do want to, and perhaps the slight easing in the last few years has made it easier for these schemes to work better than they would have done five, six, seven years ago. It is important to make that point that the police suffer from austerity, too, and faced a huge number of other issues during those years.

My question is: at a time when, I concede, public confidence in the police in this area is undoubtedly low, perhaps a bit unfairly but not entirely, do policing and business partnerships have public buy-in? Is it important that they should do so?

Paul Gerrard: Emmeline and I have done a lot of media on this over the past 18 months in different ways. Every time I have done so, the reaction from the public is horror at what I described, as indeed the committee has done. They are shocked at some of the data and they think that things should be done. Of course, most people will see this in shops. They will see there the kind of behaviour that Emmeline and I have described. I do not think there is any doubt that the pubic want the police and businesses to take action. When I describe some of the things that we and other retailers have done, the public say yes, and you should as well.

I guess there is a debate, and Emmeline alluded to it, about how intrusive that law enforcement needs to be. Ultimately, the Co-op is a convenience store; people come into our stores and spend four or five minutes, get four or five things and run out. These have to be places that people feel comfortable coming into. They need easy places to come into to do their shopping. If we get to the point of having shops that are built like fortresses, we start to lose the very essence of the high street. As Emmeline alluded to, high streets are at the heart of many communities. The communities that are facing tough times are the ones with boarded-up shops. We—businesses and the police—need to find ways to protect those shops. My sense is that the public would want us to do that, because they value the role shops play in their communities.

Professor Emmeline Taylor: I echo Paul’s views about fortress stores, as I have described them. You are absolutely right about the disinvestment in the police. They have been incredibly hard hit. They are overstretched and underresourced. We have a more junior force now, as senior officers have gone on to retire and not been replaced with talent at the same level.

That can really only be resolved through a royal commission or a commission looking into the police. I have recently published an edited collection of essays on the police that make similar recommendations, entitled Policing the Permacrisis, because the police have lurched from one crisis to another. However, the boundaries or parameters of policing have been redrawn. We are seeing that clearly with things such as “right care, right person”. The police are becoming much more focused on what the role of the policing should be. They have to do more with less. That is not going to change. That is where technology will begin to play a greater role.

However, it is not just about numbers. There is also a change in the operational tactics of the policing. We have seen the removal of neighbourhood policing, for example. That is where Business Crime Reduction Partnerships and similar initiatives can fill that void by being the eyes and ears on the streets, in the communities—intelligence gathering, and really addressing issues before they blossom. That is where the public would have that buy-in, because they would be able to see individuals—”capable guardians” is what we call them in criminology—address these issues, which are of concern to everyday people.

The Chair: Thank you. I am afraid we will have to bring the session an end. I suspect we could stay here for hours listening to you and learning from both of you. A huge thank you for the work that you are both doing in this area. Thank you for the evidence that you have given us today. In particular, thank you for all the promises you have made to provide us with more information. It would be enormously helpful to have that as quickly as possible, because we have to draw this inquiry to a conclusion. In writing to us, if you have thoughts about what you hope this committee might be recommending to the current Government, the police and everybody else interested in it, we would be interested to read your suggested recommendations. Again, thank you very much indeed.

Examination of witnesses

Katy Bourne, Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman and Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor.

Q1                  The Chair: The meeting is now being recorded, and public proceedings are beginning. This is our very first evidence session in our new inquiry looking at various aspects of shoplifting. We are enormously grateful to our three witnesses for coming. Could you begin by introducing yourselves?

Katy Bourne: Good morning. I am the police and crime commissioner for Sussex, and I lead on behalf of the police and crime commissioners for business and retail crime.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: Bore da, good morning, I am the chief constable of North Wales Police, and the NPCC lead for volume crime.

The Chair: Just for the record, what is the NPCC?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: It is the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: Good morning, I am the detective chief superintendent and head of Opal, which is the national intelligence unit for serious organised acquisitive crime.

Q2                  The Chair: Thank you. We look forward to hearing a bit more about that as we proceed. I will begin with a very simple question. We want to get a sense from you of the current situation with shoplifting, which we are looking at. There has been a lot of media coverage, and some of us are amazed by one report that suggested that there have been something like 8 million incidents of shoplifting in just one year. There are concernsabout police not investigating if the theft is for less than £200, and as a result it is thought that 90% of shoplifting incidents go unreported.

So in that context of real concern about the issue, could you each suggest to us the main trends that we should be looking at?

Katy Bourne: One of my roles as a police and crime commissioner is to be the voice of the public in policing. It became quite apparent several years ago that there was an issue with shoplifting at a local level going unreported and that it was happening in large volumes. I formed a local partnership of businesses and brought them together with the police in Sussex to look at this. There were three areas that they wanted to take forward. One was how we could encourage the retailers to report a crime. There was a plethora of reasons why they would not, but we needed to encourage them to report.

The Chair: You said that there are a number of reasons why they do not report. Why would a retailer not report it?

Katy Bourne: It takes too long. If they are an independent retailer and they have very few staff on at the time who are having to do everything in the store, the last thing they have time for is an arduous report to the police which, when they are reporting online, can take them up to 30 minutes. That might not seem a lot of time to a member of the public, but in a busy working day that is a huge amount of time for you. That was one of the big issues.

The other one was a lack of feeling that the police would do anything about it, as when they reported in the past there was not the response that they expected.

For me, shoplifting falls into three categories. You have opportunist thieves who do what it says on the tin: they see the opportunity and in they go. They tend to be younger, although not always. Then there are prolific offenders, the ones who go into the shops time and time again and shoplift constantly; they can be driven by drugs or alcohol, generally some form of substance misuse. Then, at the top end of the scale—we will come on to Pegasus—there are organised crime gangs who are operating across multiple force areas with impunity.

What was apparent to me was that there was no way for police to track this nationally. They are very good at tracking the drugs gangs and the child sexual exploitation gangs, but there was nobody with a real oversight over how many gangs were operating.

For me, those are the categories at a local level, in a nutshell. The organised crime gangs—the OCGs—were probably having a far greater impact than the prolific offenders and the opportunists.

The Chair: Thank you. Chief constable.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: We are seeing a main trend of concern whereby we have rising levels of retail crime and violence that accompanies that retail crime. One of the main concerns raised with us, as Katy has said, is from retailers whose perception is that this type of crime is not a priority for policing. The Crime Survey for England and Wales will tell us that crime is falling overall, but retail crime is a very different picture, and we are seeing that increasing, including shop theft and violence against retail workers. Our latest police recorded data shows an increase of 32% compared to the previous year, which is up 12% on the pre-pandemic time period. We welcome that increase in reporting, but we know that that is not everything that is happening and, for us, understanding that data is a real challenge.

The Chair: Just so I am absolutely clear, you are saying that the increase in the figures that you have is due to increased reporting, not an increase in the number of incidents?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: It is a mixture of both. There is an increase in the prevalence of violence that accompanies retail theft, and there is an increase in the reporting that is happening, as we now try to work our way through making it easier for retailers to report, and building retailer confidence that if they do report, something will happen about it.

Part of the work I have done around the retail crime action plan has been on making sure that all 43 forces across the country sign up to the commitment to attend every instance where a shop theft is reported and where an offender is detained, or where an offender has used violence against an individual, or where there is evidence to collect in response to a shop theft. We are starting to see those numbers increase significantly, which comes with the increase in confidence to report. So I want and expect to see those numbers increase, because it gives us a better picture of what is going on out there.

I am also the national lead on the police national database, and a few years ago we did a piece of work where we used the information that retailers had and put that through the database to understand how much of the crime was organised and how many of those associations we could link back to somebody. We saw the prevalence of organised criminality that sits across retail crime, it being a lucrative area where people are able to exploit individuals and make a profit. Hence the work that we have done in relation to Pegasus.

Q3                  The Chair: Thank you. One final question on the increased reporting and on shop theft being linked to violence. As far as you can tell, is the shopkeeper more likely to report where violence is involved?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: It is difficult to say, because I do not know what is out there that is not being reported. We are encouraging shop workers to report when any violence is used; hence, as part of the retail crime action plan, us including a really important commitment to attend and to deal with anybody who is violent to a shop worker.

The Chair: Is there not a problem, therefore, that if the police are encouraging people to report a shop theft if it involves violence, that is almost suggesting to the shopkeeper not even to bother if no violence is involved?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: That is absolutely not the message we are giving to the retail community. Our message to the retail community is, “Report what’s happening”. We need to understand the intelligence picture, we need to identify those individuals. We have worked really hard to make sure that we have avenues to be able to capture CCTV evidence in shops, which is the critical evidence that the shop worker has.

We have worked really hard, certainly with the big stores, to make sure that when incidents are reported the key witness is available to attend court. There is a multitude of difficulties there, but our message to shop workers and to the retail community is very clear: “Report it to us. We want to know about it”. From an attendance point of view, if there is violence, if you detain somebody or there is evidence to collect, we will obviously attend in order to be able to do that.

The Chair: Thank you. Detective chief inspector.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: From an organised crime point of view, it is really important to understand that, in order to manage organised crime, we rely on information and intelligence. When we are only seeing a very small element of the picture, we do not see the bigger picture around organised crime, and that is crucial for us in identifying OCGs.

Over the last few years, we have seen a degree of sophistication in the committing of the offences. First, you will see recent events on TikTok, for instance, where offenders have organised to go to a particular store and then rob it. That is a very quick way of spreading a message very efficiently.

Secondly, we have seen criminals travelling from abroad to the UK purely to commit retail crime and then be on their way. Some are coming here and going back in a day on a very cheap flight with very little chance of being captured. They may not have been subject to the criminal justice system previously, so fingerprints, DNA and so on may not be on our system. We have seen a real shift.

Not only that, but, as the Chief said, we have also seen a change in the type of offending, of criminality, and the violence involved in it. You may also have seen the phenomenon of steaming offences: large groups of individuals going into high-tech shops en masse and just ripping high-tech property out of walls and from desks. There is a real change in the MO of what you would probably imagine was shoplifting traditionally—someone just walking in and covertly secreting something on themselves.

The Chair: It is sad that you describe that as an increase in sophistication, but I know exactly what you mean.

Q4                  Baroness Meacher: What does the data tell us about the relative importance of the different types of shoplifters: the casual shoplifter relative to the criminal gangs and so on? The data is not very clear about the numbers, but you have given us a bit of information, which is very helpful. Certainly I assume that the increasing use of shopping online, for example, has completely changed the nature of shoplifting, and probably increased the role of the organised criminal gangs. Is that correct? Also, to what extent has the increase in online shopping changed the relative importance of the different types of shoplifters? It would be interesting to hear more from you about the numbers in relation to the types of shoplifters and shoplifting, if you like.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: If we go back 20 years, a period that I remember in my police service, we were equipped to deal with a very different type of crime. We trained our officers to deal with burglary, theft and criminal damage. Now, 20 years on, people’s sophistication online is very different, so our training for our officers is different.

We are expecting a lot more from them, such as the ability to carry out a crime inquiry involving things like online shops, but we also see violence against delivery drivers in relation to bits of freight that are being moved between shops for deliveries. There is a widespread problem where violence seems to be on the increase in our retail community, and we are very alive to that.

It is really difficult to interpret the data at the moment, because we are in the development process. Opal, and the work of Pegasus, exists partly to get the confidence of the retail community to report to us so that we can understand the data better and more holistically. James will be in a better place than I am to talk about the type of data that he is starting to see on the organised criminality and that side of things, but we are not yet in an advanced position to be able to interpret that data in the way I would like to. We have lots of plans in place to be able to collect the data, understand it better, and equip and deploy our resources better in order to combat the problem.

Online has definitely changed the make-up and the feel of high streets, and we have definitely seen a push towards big retail parks. For us, there is a balance to be struck between the big providers in the retail parks—those big high street brands that everybody knows—versus the small independent retailer who is part of the community and perhaps lives over the shop. When violence happens in their shop it feels to them very much like it is happening in their home, so we are actively working on being able to make sure that we have that response right for them. We are working with the Grocer magazine and that side of the industry to do that and to try to get to the heart of that with our police and crime commissioners. But I do not think we have the data in any advanced form to enable us to interpret it properly at the moment.

Baroness Meacher: That is right. There is a bit of a way to go. Katy, do you want to say anything further as a crime commissioner?

Katy Bourne: Yes, please. Here is the thing: you can only resource what you can measure, and the police are very evidence driven. Shoplifting has been increasing for many years, and it has not been measured effectively. It is a gateway crime. I spent Saturday morning with two ex-offenders who have turned their lives around and are now doing some amazing work in Sussex with young people and various other bits. Interestingly, they both served long terms in prison for some very bad crimes, but where did they start? One said he was eight when he went shoplifting, and the other said he was five when he went shoplifting. So they all begin somewhere, and this is where criminals hone their skills.

This is why it matters so much to the public, and it matters to us because we shop in those communities and high streets. Yes, online is changing the whole business model of the high street, but we need to support our retailers. We need those areas where we can come together as communities. Our high streets need to be strong, because they employ people who pay their taxes, which pay for the public services that the public want. For me, this goes right to the heart of it: if we are not measuring and recording it, we are not going to know what is out there.

That is a start, and it is great that Chief Constable Blakeman has the retail crime action plan that the chiefs across the country have all signed up to. It is not yet perfect, but at last we are moving in the right direction.

Baroness Meacher: That is encouraging to hear. Jim, do you want to add anything?

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: No, the chief has said it all really.

Q5                  Baroness Buscombe: Of course, you can only measure the data if you ask the right questions, so what are the key things that you are collecting data on? Is it a profile of the people? If it is violence, is it the weapons that they use? It is not just numbers. What is the profile of these people? You mentioned people flying in and flying out again. Could you just expand on that please?

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: It would probably be helpful for me to talk about this. Part of the work that the organised retail crime will be doing on behalf of the Pegasus partnership will be on a strategic assessment. That is a kind of foot on the ball moment about what organised retail crime is.

Bearing in mind that the police are attending only a small proportion of those offences, as we talked about, we have only a very small window in which to look, so we had to look a little wider. The work in partnership provides us with an opportunity to look at the partnership data as well as police data for the first time, so that we blend those two pieces of information together.

We have gone out to a huge number of sources; there are private companies that hold data on behalf of supermarkets and there are supermarkets that hold their own data, so we have put out a call to arms for all their information for two years so that we can assess that. What we are looking for in there is what constitutes serious and organised crime. Some retailers will have a different view of what organised crime is, and we had to come to a baseline assessment of what we are going to say is organised crime. We are also looking at the proportion of crime and incidents that are reported by retailers are actually reported to the police, so we can see where the gap is and who are the better reporters and who are the not so good reporters.

We can also assess the quality of the information, and the high-harm offenders are the ones we are looking for in this. The retail crime team will be focusing mostly on the people who cause the most threat, harm and risk to shop workers and the public. We know that some individuals are involved in other criminality, for instance, so we are not just thinking, “Okay, are they involved in shop theft?” They may be involved in drugs as well, and this may be an opportunity for us to manage those offenders.

So we are looking across a wide variety of sources to help us ultimately to target the high offenders, if that makes sense, rather than the criminality focusing on them.

Baroness Buscombe: And who are they? Is there a pattern?

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: Again, itdepends on where you look. That is the reality. You might find a completely different demographic in an inner city compared to perhaps the travelling offenders I have spoken about—effectively, the individuals who are coming into the UK. There is a wide and varied demographic. The strategic assessment will, I hope, tell us what the demographics look like, the make-up of the groups and the drivers.

Q6                  Lord Dubs: Could you say a bit more about the challenges for the police in responding to shoplifting, and how you think this affects public confidence in the police? I will throw in one more. You have not mentioned schools. What is your relationship with schools? Some of the kids are young, and they are on a path that you want to get them off.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: There are real challenges across policing from the amount of demand that comes into our control rooms and into every police force every day. Thousands and thousands of calls come into our control centre for a whole range of issues, be that mental health right through to serious crime. We have concentrated our efforts in our control rooms on prioritisation and making sure that we have the ability to attend. That is why the work on the retail crime action plan took some real consultation with our forces across the country.

As you are well aware, we have also increased our workforce, but that means that we have a relatively young new workforce, many of whom are still in the first couple of years of their experience of being police officers. So we are trying to work through those challenges and those issues.

Prioritisation is one of the elements that has caused us to think hard about how we respond to this. The work that James is doing on the volume crime team’s behalf is really important to being able to understand the initial high-harm offenders who we can remove, and to have greater understanding that these individuals do not just commit retail crime; they commit any type of crime that is available and there is an opportunity to exploit a market on.

On the point about schools, we have different schools programmes across the country. There is huge investment in schools programmes. I have a schools programme across Wales, and I invest part of my policing budget in officers who work in schools with young individuals who are at risk of being and becoming involved in crime, so that we can look at every opportunity to offer them a different pathway. Obviously, we deal with young people as they enter the criminal justice system, so at the first opportunity we try to move them away from crime.

So our teams are very much working with our policing programme to look at restorative justice and at opportunities to turn these young lives around. We also do a huge amount of work—we certainly do across Wales, and I know other forces do as well—on being trauma-informed so that we understand what is going on in that young person’s life and how we can intervene with other agencies to make a difference perhaps.

So a huge amount of work is going on in relation to young people and understanding the greater picture as we balance the ongoing demand that we see into our control rooms of every type of issue that people call the police about.

Katy Bourne: As the Chief Constable said, most forces have schools officers, and they add huge value. In my office in Sussex, I started a programme called Reboot, which works with young people, with funding from the Home Office several years ago. It has now been adopted by Sussex Police as business as usual, and we use voluntary sector organisations across Sussex.

When a young person comes to the notice of the police they are put through a stepped programme. We have had huge results and changes. Interestingly, at stage one of the programme, in 80% of the cases all that is needed is a letter from the police to the parent or guardian saying, “Little Katy Bourne has been caught stealing. Don’t do it again”, and that is enough. Even parents with children who are kicking up want to do the right thing by their children.

We found that a lot of parents did not know that their child was misbehaving until they got to the magistrates’ court. That was the first time the parent would know. So just a letter deters 80% of them from the start. There are more steps to it and others who are a bit more entrenched and need more help. With young people it is about focusing more on the positive behaviours, not on the negatives, because all they hear is, “You’re doing it wrong, you’re doing it wrong”. When you ask them, “What do you think you’re getting right?” it is a whole different thing, and it is a great teachable moment for them.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: From an organised crime point of view, one of the biggest concerns we have is child criminal exploitation, which will be one focus. One of the high harms we will be focusing on is where organised crime groups are exploiting children and using them to steal goods, which will certainly increase the prioritisation of that group.

Q7                  The Chair: I am slightly concerned about this business of prioritisation. Chief constable, you talked about the increased workforce, but that they are quite young and have to be trained, et cetera, which I understand. You also both talked about prioritisation. In the pecking order up to about now, where has shoplifting been in prioritisation?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: In the control room, we base the call not on the crime type but on the threat, harm and risks that are present at that time. If a retailer is being threatened by an individual at the store at the time, that will be high risk and high harm, so we will look to attend that. In the past, those individuals have left the store and so that call has been reprioritised. We have a concentrated effort going on to make sure that we prioritise calls from stores, and we have seen an increase in the amount of attendance, with some forces hitting 100% attendance in relation to the violence being perpetrated. So we are improving that.

I cannot say that it has been that way in the past, and that has not assisted our retail community’s confidence. We have been doing work to increase that confidence level so that we get a better idea and a clearer picture of what is going on and we can recover the evidence, get the individuals before the courts if needed, and make sure that we are protecting our communities from further violence. That prioritisation has been an ongoing piece of work.

If I could take a moment to explain, in any one day you can have anything from a very clearly in-crisis individual suffering a mental health episode where there is a serious and significant threat to their life, to some serious sexual offending, to a robbery, to a person presenting violence. It is about making sure that we have enough staff to attend to all those while also trying to deal with other issues that are really challenging for us such as being tied up at hospitals and in custody units. It is an ongoing balance for our control rooms every day, and as the chief constable I take a real, active interest in whether we have enough people to meet the challenges of the day.

The Chair: I am not trying to put words in your mouth, but the implication is that non-violent related shoplifting will not be addressed—even with all the work you are doing now on this issue—without even more staffing.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: I would not say that. The retail crime action plan was written on the basis not only of attending when somebody is being violent to a retail worker or is detained, but of attending when there is evidence to gather; that might be CCTV evidence or evidence from the shop or retail worker. It might not be an immediate response—within 10 minutes—and we might attend within four hours, but it is recognition of the fact that that job will be on our system and we will be looking to attend in order to gather the CCTV, do the necessary inquiries, identify that individual, and bring them to justice.

James is working with the big retailers to look at all their data and use every technical capability we have to identify individuals who crop up time and time again. We are dealing with it in the same way, but that particular retailer may not see somebody from the Opal team attend their store. It is a case of prioritising the violence, prioritising where somebody is detained, and prioritising where we can gain evidence.

Q8                  Baroness Prashar: I want to build on the Chair’s question, because it seems to me that it is about prevention. We heard earlier that shoplifting starts very early on. If you do not prioritise shoplifting that is non-violent, are you not missing a trick in dealing with it at an early stage?

My other question is related to the first answer. What action is being taken to make the process of reporting this crime easier? We heard that it is quite difficult for small shopkeepers to report it, because they find it very time-consuming.

Katy Bourne: We have a pilot running currently in Sussex with the Co-op called One Touch Reporting, which we started a couple of years ago. We are working with the Co-op stores because they were reporting more crime than our other stores were. The pilot is in conjunction with the National Business Crime Solution, which is a not-for-profit organisation, and Sussex Police.

In 22 of the Co-op stores, we have reduced the reporting time from 30 minutes down to two minutes at the press of a button. Using an API, the information goes straight from that store into Sussex Police systems. It is brilliant, because we know that volume crime is out there, and it has really helped me to shape the whole narrative around this nationally. Bearing in mind that there are 86 Co-ops in Sussex, those 22 stores alone amounted to 17% of the total volume of business crime reported to Sussex Police last year. Imagine what will happen when we switch them all on. As you have heard the chief constable say, we have to be realistic about policing. Of course we would love them to do everything, but that is where the prioritising comes in. This is just to give you an idea. It can be done.

The Government are now really interested in hotspot policing, for which there has been a lot of funding to forces. In my force, I asked that they focus the hotspot policing on several of our retail crime areas. Last year, they focused the hotspot patrolling on an area across the Adur and Worthing district in Sussex, and we saw a nearly 50% decrease in shoplifting in a year. So there are things that you can do such as prevention. It is good old-fashioned policing, but we know it works; the evidence is there. As a police and crime commissioner, my focus is on performance and challenging my chief constable to perform. And this matters to people, so this is an area of focus for me.

Baroness Hughes of Stretford: In terms of assisting the police, do you feel that the retailers themselves pay enough attention to target hardening and putting in preventive measures, such as infrastructure or changing the way the stores operate, to try to catch people earlier or prevent them entirely from coming into a store?

Katy Bourne: The retailers have gone above and beyond in recent years and have spent millions of pounds on target hardening. There is always more that they can do, and they would be the first to admit it. I have really enjoyed the can-do attitude of the retailers we are working with in the Pegasus partnership. They really want to support the police and see this as a joint partnership. We have been very lucky to be able to work with them.

The Chair: That is a very interesting segue into Lord McInnes.

Q9                  Lord McInnes of Kilwinning: I am going to ask a bit more about the nuts and bolts of the retail crime action plan. Inevitably, whenever a new plan is announced, there is always public cynicism about how long it will continue and how it works in reality. Since October 2023, when the retail crime action plan was announced and then reported on in February, chief constables have reported a significant fall in retail crime thanks to it.

Chief Constable Blakeman and DCS Taylor, could you explain a bit more about how the day-to-day management of the plan works, who is involved in that on a daily basis, and the confidence you have that this will have longevity and not just be a quick fix that is not reported on? Could you also explain to us how Opal works in connection with the overall plan? Then perhaps Katy can come in on how Pegasus fits into the overall strategy.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: We wrote the plan at the back end of last year, having spent some time doing work, listening, and understanding the problems we needed to solve at that particular time. We put a very strong governance model around it, because that is an important part of making sure the sustainability and longevity are there.

Each force has a single point of contact. They come into a national meeting with ACC Alex Goss, who works as part of my team, and we look at how we are developing and delivering, and how we need to further develop the retail action plan so that it can deal with today’s problems and look at tomorrow’s issues. From that perspective, putting that strong governance around it helps us to monitor things like attendance levels and drops in crime, and understand how we are going to tackle One Touch Reporting for the future, which we need to be able to do. It also gives us an opportunity to look at what preventive measures we can put in place, which stores and outlets are particularly good at prevention, and how that is working to decrease the level of retail theft and violence, which, again, is really helpful to us.

Opal was part of the volume crime work that I started some years ago now. The premise was for us to look at volume crime and understand the trends that we see. These individuals are opportunists. They do not commit only retail crime; they would not walk past a vehicle with an open window and a handbag on the seat and say, “I don’t do vehicle crime”. They will take any opportunity to steal anything that is there.

It was so that we could understand the full gamut of individuals who work within that and the markets that sit behind it—these individuals do not steal this stuff for themselves but to sell—and look at working with avenues that allow that marketplace to thrive, whether that be online marketplaces or individual handlers in estates where we know that happens, so that we can innovate and be able use things like forensic marking, working with stores or any type of organisation that is affected by volume crime.

Opal came together to give us the ability to do that, and it seemed the perfect platform for Pegasus to work within, because it concentrated on that. James has put a lot of work and effort into making sure that Opal works at the same levels as our Regional Organised Crime Units and that we link in with the National Crime Agency, Europol and other big agencies. That allows us to understand the mechanisms by which people exploit this whole opportunity to make money.

We talked about it being the gateway offence for some young people, but we have individuals who are exploiting this at quite a senior level and see it as an opportunity to make money in this particular frame and then move on to something else. That is why Pegasus’ work is so important: it looks at those who are exploiting, orchestrating and manipulating individuals to commit this type of criminality.

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning: How often is the governance meeting with the point of contact from each force?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: It is a quarterly governance meeting, but there will be much more regular ongoing meetings than that in force. This obviously now feeds into policing performance; it is part of our investigation standards. We made a commitment to follow up all reasonable lines of inquiry, which is part of the HMIC view of how forces are performing. The interconnections ensure its sustainability, because whatever you look at, whether it be the theft of a lawnmower from a shed or a substantial amount of alcohol from Sainsbury’s, it is following all the reasonable lines of inquiry and taking every opportunity to detect that particular offence.

Q10             Lord Sandhurst: This question follows on from what you have all said: that the more organised stealing is done to resell it. Years ago it used to be said that without handlers there would be no thieves. People used to resell goods in the pub. What are you doing nowadays about eBay and TikTok? TikTok is obviously a forum where it can be said, “Come on, this shop’s got good stuff. Let’s mob it”, and it might be sold on eBay or other online fora that I am not privy to.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: We have been working very closely with the Policing Minister on what is available to enable us to work with eBay, Facebook Marketplace—all those opportunity areas where people sell things online—to show how those providers can be better at policing those areas. Having to show and submit ID in order to sell, making things trackable, and no cash payments are all areas that we are working on.

The Chair: You say “we”. Lord Sandhurst’s point was about online marketplaces, which of course are right across the country, so it is not an individual force. Who are you referring to when you say “we”?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: It is me as the lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council for volume crime, James as the lead for Pegasus, Katy in relation to the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, and the Home Office’s crime unit. It is an amalgamation of a partnership to look at how we can work with providers like eBay and Facebook Marketplace.

Q11             The Chair: How many officers across the whole country are looking into the issue of crimes that involve eBay, Facebook Marketplace, et cetera?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: I could not give you a definitive number, but each force and Regional Organised Crime Unit has the ability to look at online activity. We spoke earlier about the complexity of training officers to gather evidence in a different format and a different way, and present that. We are currently looking at those areas.

Lord Sandhurst: They might have the ability to do it, but do they have the individuals who are focused on doing it? If I go to North Wales Police, are you still the chief constable there, because you have this other role as well?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: Yes.

Lord Sandhurst: What is your force doing? Does it have people who are really focused on this?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: My force is doing much the same as other forces, which is prioritising the work that comes into my online team and looking at that against child sexual abuse online and all the other things that we see. In the same way we deal with threat, harm and risk, we are trying to match that against an incident involving a young person in danger who we need to deal with, and we may be doing work in the background on other areas as well. It is really difficult. I am not suggesting that it is not. It is a threat, harm and risk-based approach on the basis of the officers I have.

Q12             Lord Sandhurst: Do you need more resources?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: Yes. I would always say that I need more resources.

Lord Sandhurst: I thought you were going to say that.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: Every chief constable in the country would say that.

Lord Sandhurst: This is your opportunity to sell.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: Policing costs 1% of the GDP. It is a really big area. Finances and budgets are tight. Being able to put the right police officers or police staff into areas like this remains an ongoing and constant juggle to make sure that I am dealing with the threats, harm and risks that are most important to my communities across the board in what is a largely rural force but also has some very big towns.

Q13             Lord Bach: My question is fairly simple, but I want to preface it by saying that I really wish Pegasus had been in existence when I was a police and crime commissioner. My first reaction to it is very favourable.

You have chosen a number of large companies, and Asda is about the only big supermarket I can think of at the moment that is not a member. I might ask about that if it is legitimate to ask. How are you going to persuade the retailers to contribute funding after the first two years or so? They are obviously being pretty generous with their funding, but only because they are hoping to see results and save themselves some money from shoplifting, but are you happy? Are you going to persuade them to contribute?

Katy Bourne: That is probably a question for me, because I got them all to cough up the money in the first place.

Lord Bach: It is for you.

Katy Bourne: Just over a year ago, I was approached by some of the major retailers in the country. They had been meeting for several months, or years, to discuss the problem of organised criminality that they were seeing. I had just recently started the business and retail crime portfolio at the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners. They reached out and said, “Come and talk to us”, and I said to them, “Explain the type of OCGs that you’re seeing. Help me to understand it, so I can relay this on”.

They described one couple of brothers who had taken two and a half years to catch and had managed to amass about £1.5 million-worth of goods in that time. Some police forces had done really good work around that case, but they were looking only at isolated incidences within their own police force area. They were not joining up the dots with other forces; why should they? They were dealing just in their own areas and not seeing the pattern across, and, when I asked a few more questions, it became pretty apparent to me that policing nationally did not have this oversight.

Having been a police and crime commissioner for as long as I have—since day one—I knew that the National Police Chiefs’ Council led on various thematics across the country, because this is how it does its prioritisation, and rightly so. I knew Opal existed and that Chief Constable Blakeman had the lead for all serious acquisitive crime, and this very much seemed to me where it sat. So I picked the phone up, we had a conversation, and I invited her along to this group of retailers with me.

As a very sensible person who knows how to delegate, Chief Constable Blakeman delegated Chief Superintendent Taylor, who came to the first meeting—I have to say he was probably quite worried that he was going to get a hard time from the retailers, but we promised him top cover. Everybody vented at that point, and then he was very much tasked to go away and come up with a plan for how Opal—the operational arm for the serious acquisitive crime—would be able to stand a team up. He came back with a gold, silver and bronze solution for the retailers. The retailers being retailers wanted the gold, and we agreed we needed a minimum of 10 retailers in the first instance that would pay a sum of £60,000 over two years. So we needed £600,000 to stand up a small team within Opal, which would come under Chief Superintendent Taylor’s domain and leadership, and that is how it would be tasked.

That is very much how it grew. Some retailers that were at the table did not want to, or could not, participate because sometimes their financial cycles are such that they have already agreed the amount for their security for that year; others were able to be more flexible. Some larger retailers obviously had more money. We called ourselves Pegasus, so we had an identity, and we are now the governance for this. It will run for two years while that money is being spent, but it is about us all coming together and agreeing measures and performance measures that we can all adopt. It is not just about having those performance measures for the police; it is about the retailers stepping up and doing their bit.

It was very much on the understanding that, first, the police have operational direction from day one in all decisions—it has to work that way because that is how policing works best—and secondly, that the retailers around the table were not exclusive; it was not going to be just about their problems and their issues. This was to benefit everybody nationally, and that is where we are.

The Chair: We will pick that point up in a couple of seconds. Baroness Hughes, you wanted to come in.

Q14             Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Could you explain to the committee how Pegasus, which is a national oversight operation, connects regionally with the Regional Organised Crime Units and with local police services? For instance, does every ROCU now start mapping gangs involved in shoplifting? Does every local police service have its own partnership board following and driving the action plan? Do you have the infrastructure at those different levels to support the national activity?

Katy Bourne: The answer is yes. I am a great believer in kick a rolling stone and do not try to reinvent something. Pegasus is very much the governance piece. I chair it, the retailers come together, Chief Superintendent Taylor and Chief Constable Blakeman attend, the Home Office is around the table, and Mitie support us with the secretariat function, although the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners is going to take that over. If it is all right with you, I will pass over to Chief Superintendent Taylor to give an operational point of view.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: There are nationally recognised ways in which we identify and map OCGs. Part of my role was to make sure that organised retail crime was now very much embedded within policing. We had to have some conversations with the heads of ROCU to make sure that they were aware of this initiative and that this would be something that they had not seen before. There are systems and processes in place regarding how we map OCGs. There is a set criterion which we need to meet, and the threshold needs to be met. We agreed right at the beginning that if the threshold was not met then we could not just change the process just to fit these crime­—

Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Are you monitoring their activity?

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: We had our first operational meeting on 1 May, and we have had some operational success in the last week, so we are getting there. With the operational work we had last week, we are now pushing towards getting that group scored and mapped.

Lord Sandhurst: I think I understood you as saying, “We’ve got £600,000 for the first two years”. In other words, is it £600,000 up front which will be spread over two years? What is going to happen at the end of that? I realise the figures may change and you have only been going six months. How do people see it?

Katy Bourne: We have been so successful we have a bit more than the £600,000. We currently have 14, I believe, members around the table. We have a couple of others who are really interested in joining as well, and we are being approached all the time by other organisations that are keen. I can see it continuing, but my preference, and I speak from a business background, is that this becomes business as usual for policing nationally because they should be doing this anyway.

How do we make this business as usual? We need the evidence base. Once Opal has been able to map and can say definitively, “There are this many OCGs operating at any one time across retail in this country”, that gives police nationally, and Chief Constable Blakeman, a massive hand to then go to Treasury when it comes to the policing budgets for the following year—to be able to evidence the need for that funding in a way that has not been possible before.

Lord Sandhurst: OCG being organised crime groups.

Katy Bourne: Organised crime gang, yes.

Q15             Lord Henley: We have gone through the list of the 14 members you have at the moment, and my colleague Lord Bach already identified that Asda and one or two other big ones were missing. What about the small ones that are probably more important? Are there any representatives of businesses such as SPAR? I am trying to remember the name of the body that represents all the smaller businesses.

Katy Bourne: Yes, we have an organisation called National Business Crime Solutions that represents a lot of the smaller retailers. It is around the table too. The work that Opal is doing is the national work to map the OCGs, which will have a benefit to everybody longer term because once they get disrupted it will filter down, and it will bring up the importance of business and retail crime at every Regional Organised Crime Unit around the country. I believe there are nine of them, is that right?

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: Nine ROCUs? Yes.

Katy Bourne: There are nine ROCUs. I sit on the south-east one, and we now have it as a standing item. When police and crime commissioners and chief constables come together, we use that as an opportunity to drive performance and look at how they are tackling it there. So, it is early days, but we are moving in the right direction.

The Chair: Can I be slightly provocative? You could argue that the scheme that has been described, Pegasus, is very similar to what happened 100-plus years ago when individual fire brigades were set up in a particular area. They were funded by some rich people who could afford to have them, so the fire engine would trundle along ignoring a fire from somebody who had not paid to go and deal with a fire from somebody who had paid. It could be argued that Pegasus is somewhat like that: the rich people affording to have police time, secretariat back-up and so on, and the small guys lose out. I think I know what your answer is, but rather than put words in your mouth, how would you justify that situation and why is what I have said wrong?

Katy Bourne: The whole ethos of the Pegasus governance group is that this is for the greater good, not for the individuals round the table. It works as a partnership, as a team, and that is why it is so important that policing has ultimate operational independence, oversight and say. It is Chief Superintendent Taylor’s decision which OCGs they map, who they go after and so on. The beauty of our British policing model is that it keeps everybody safe regardless of how much money you have in the bank.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: In the same way that our organised criminals do not really discriminate in terms of the crime type, they do not discriminate in terms of the store either. They would not say, “I only steal from Marks & Spencer”. They steal at any opportunity that is there. Obviously, targeting those individuals from organised crime groups allows us to cover the breadth of the retail community rather than concentrating on becoming a private police service for one particular company.

Q16             Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Some of youhave touched on issues relevant to this question, so your answers might be quite quick. You mentioned the role of the private companies in providing the secretariat to Pegasus, and, I think, Katy, you also indicated that role would be translated to the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in due course. What do you see as the potential conflicts while you have them providing the secretariat function, and how are those conflicts of interest addressed?

Katy Bourne: I do not think there was a conflict initially because the retailers were already talking. It had very much been initiated by Mitie in the first instance, but they were not all Mitie customers that were coming together so I felt quite confident that there was a good cross-section. The reason the APCC did not take it up sooner was because it was less than a year old, but we are now, which will help to give that bit of independence. For me, it is the governance side that keeps the transparency alive. That is why we called ourselves Pegasus. We know who we are. We have set ourselves performance measures for each of us around the table, so it is not just about one organisation having a sway and a bigger say than another.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: To reiterate around that matter of independence, as part of the process to inform the retailers of how they can engage with Opal to put forward their packages and their organised crime groups, we have run a number of engagement sessions. We have had nine formal engagement sessions, over 400 people have attended those, and 90-plus partners, including businesses and other organisations that support businesses, have attended to see how they can engage with us. We had our first tasking meeting on 1 May. We accepted four packages from 19 that were put forward, which is really encouraging. Of those four, one of them was from a business that is not on the steering group; so it is without fear or favour.

Q17             The Chair: I am going to turn to Baroness Buscombe in a second, but I just want to raise with you another issue, again not being critical but just inquiring. We have, certainly in England, a large number of organisations that bring businesses together and that would include many of both small and large shopkeepers, the most obvious example being business improvement districts. Why was the scheme set up in effect to create another body rather than to work with the bodies that already exist?

Katy Bourne: It was not to create another body, because the whole point of it was to work operationally through Opal, and Opal already existed. One of the pillars that Chief Constable Blakeman had under Opal was serious and acquisitive crime. Another one was around vehicle crime and theft of plant machinery and so on. One was the retail business piece, which is why, for me, it felt sensible that it should sit there. The structure is already there. The group of retailers, Pegasus, the governance group, is not separate. The BIDs, the business improvement districts, are very much at the local level­. I have seven across Sussex, and I work very closely with them. They all attend my quarterly partnership meeting where all our local businesses are represented if they wish to be around that table. I am not trying to invent extra structures. Pegasus, the partnership, is now a governance piece and that is important to drive performance going forwards.

The Chair: Thank you, very helpful.

Q18             Baroness Buscombe: I just want to quickly pay tribute to you all. We know the organised crime gangs are very powerful and can be very threatening, so well done to you for doing this, because I would not be surprised if your personal lives are at risk as a result. That may sound a little extreme, but people ought to be aware that these gangs can be extraordinarily threatening.

How much does organised crime now account for shoplifting overall? Should we tell the public more about what is going on because we need deterrence? For far too long, those gangs have been acting in the most extraordinary way, and of course we know that the issue has grown and grown. What can we do to inform the public so they can be more alert and play their part in supporting you?

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: Could you repeat the first part of your question again?

Baroness Buscombe: How much shoplifting does organised crime account for overall?

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: At the moment, we do not know. When we had our first conversations with the Pegasus partnership, we heard about the different pockets of what organised retail crime looks like and the gangs affecting them, and it sounded horrendous. We need to take all that data in and map it against our criteria to say, “This is organised crime; this is localised offending”. That strategic assessment would distil all that information to have a coherent picture of what organised retail crime looks like.

In terms of warning and informing the public, Katy has been an absolute force of nature in raising retail crime as a national problem. I do not think there was a day going by where retail crime was not mentioned on the news for a period, which is really encouraging. I think the public are very much more aware and informed now about retail crime and what to look out for around organised retail crime. There is still more to do in that space and, as Lord Sandhurst talked about, the second-hand market is something that we need to target, which will take time. A culture change will be needed.

Baroness Buscombe: Westill have car boot sales. They are so popular, are they not? Are you checking those out?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: We talked earlier about an entry route into criminality for young people and, when we look at the scale of it, that is not a massive amount in terms of the totality of retail crime we are seeing. We talked a little about substance abusers involved in retail crime as a way of funding their habits. Those individuals are the people who are utilising our person on the estate that handles stolen goods or the car boot sale and so on. I know from my own force that my staff have some real frustration when they are dealing with that individual and putting them before the court but finding that they are back out and quite quickly reoffending.

We really welcome things like tagging for us to be able to put some controls around that behaviour, but there is a lot of work to do in relation to us identifying those people who handle, and that includes things like car boot sales but also the person on the estate that people can go through. They have been exploiting the cost of living crisis. We are appealing to the public to think about where they are buying things from; if it is really cheap and too good to be true, then it is probably stolen. Give us the intelligence. Let us know, so that we can take action in relation to those people because they are driving up costs in shops. There is a huge amount to do in terms of informing the public and getting people to make those choices and tell us when they believe that somebody is selling second-hand goods, so that we are able to target that individual rather than randomly visit car boot sales trying to identify something there.

Lord Sandhurst: I just had this thought: we talked about, for example, TikTok—I am not picking on it, but you identified it as being where flash mobs can originate from—and then there are the different web marketplaces. They are all regulated by Ofcom, are they not? In a sense, it is very important that Ofcom puts them under pressure, first, not to allow this sort of mob to stir up and, secondly, to take even more care not to allow resale and to penalise them. It can fine them enormous sums if it wants to and publicise it. Have you thought of that?

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: Yes. On the flash mobs that you spoke about, the challenge with social media that is being used is that as soon as we ask them to take it down, a new one will appear, and we are just chasing our tail with it. Of course, we are talking about foreign entities as well.

Lord Sandhurst: What I was looking at was that the regulators can usually say, “If this carries on, we are going to whack you with big fines, so, somehow, Mr TikTok, or whoever you are, you are going to have to stop this happening in the first place and build in filters”. And ditto with the reselling. Usually, if big enough fines are levied, people then say, “Ah, we’d better find a way of doing this”, because it ceases to be economic for those enormous organisations.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: There is definitely work to do in this area, and it is an area that we are actively looking at. From the point of view of people selling online, it is a real frustration that you do not have to have and give identification in order to sell. Clearly, there are other agencies that we can work with in terms of income tax revenue et cetera for people who are using those sites online and selling lots and lots of products. There is an opportunity for us to work with wider agencies to target this area as well as the regulators, and it is certainly a piece of work that we have to get our head around and do.

The Chair: I should know the answer to this, but I really do not: in terms of the online harms Bill—now an Act that has gone through Parliament recently[1]—was this issue addressed at all during the passage of that? Did the police lobby for it to be addressed? I am getting a shaking of heads; we certainly ought to look at it.

Do the police have a notification and take-down power? When you say you contact them and you notify, and they then take it down, do you have the power to require a take-down?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: I do not think we do. I would have to double-check.

The Chair: I do not think you do either, but because certain organisations do, presumably there would be some merit in the police having that power.

Baroness Buscombe: As you are building up the databases now, do you have a sense of when you are going to have a picture of what is really happening that you can work with?

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor: Yes, the strategic assessment is being written, so we have put out a call for all the data that we have. To the call that we have put out, we have had some 32 police forces respond, eight of the big retailers, and we are also interrogating a number of retail crime platforms to help us with that. You can imagine that is a huge amount of data, and it is going to take some months. We anticipate two or three months before that paper will be published.

The Chair: Baroness Meacher will now move us on to look at another issue that this committee has previously been looking at.

Q19             Baroness Meacher: What is the role of facial recognition technology in dealing with shoplifting? Is it a major tool?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: Yes. I have talked about gaining evidence and attending a store to get evidence. CCTV evidence is the main thing that we are interested in as well as witness evidence. We will use the police national database, which retains custody records across the country, to do a retrospective: only looking at a crime scene, only looking at the individual who is relevant, and seeing whether they match an image that we have already stored for somebody who has been through custody units across the country. If we get a match in relation to that, we use that as part of the intelligence picture of the investigation and seek to triangulate it with other evidence that might be available, i.e. evidence from the store assistant, et cetera.

We utilise it as a way of being able to identify individuals and especially people who are not known at all. If somebody is known, there is no need to put them through the retrospective facial recognition; we already know who they are. From that perspective, we are working hard with forces to make sure that those reasonable lines of inquiry include exploiting opportunities to look at the evidence that we already have retained on police systems.

Baroness Meacher: How significant would you say facial recognition technology is in your evidence gathering?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: It is a really important tool for us in identifying individuals as part of an investigation. It is a slightly different concept for stores. Within stores, there might be opportunities for providers that are nothing to do with policing to identify people who have cropped up repeatedly in that store or other stores. Shoplifting is a way of alerting a member of staff. They can then go over and challenge people in a productive way in relation to why they are in the store.

Facial recognition forms an ability to prevent; it forms an ability to gather intelligence, and it provides us with an important opportunity to identify some of those prolific offenders. It has certainly been an important part of the work that James is doing in relation to those individuals who travel up and down the country and appear at perhaps eight or nine different locations in forces, and of our being able to identify who they are and get some good intelligence around them.

Q20             The Chair: I would like to know a little more about how easy it is, or hard it is, for an individual police force to secure a prosecution against shoplifters. Are there any issues we should be aware of?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: It is a really challenging picture in terms of criminal justice at the moment, and our job is to put those individuals with the evidence to CPS to secure a charge and put them before the court. We can charge in certain circumstances. Clearly, it is more beneficial for those individuals who are organised for us to look at bigger offences and bigger charges with more substantial custodial sentences attached to them. We work with our CPS colleagues to be able to do that.

Sentencing in terms of individuals causes some frustration, as I have mentioned. We can find individuals who are prolific in their offending. An officer works really hard and puts them into the court system; they get a non-custodial sentence—perhaps a fine, perhaps something else—and then they are back out the next day doing exactly the same thing. Being able to look at wider mechanisms for controlling behaviour, such as tagging, is important for us because it allows us to make sure that we can identify. Criminal behaviour orders are also important. For persistent nuisances going into stores and continually shoplifting, it is important for us to be able to place additional control measures around them so that they do not become a threat, a nuisance and a source of intimidation to people trying to use the store and to shop workers.

The Chair: We talked earlier about small shopkeepers—those who do not have the time to fill in a complaint in the first place, unless the new, wonderful two-minute app is available to everybody.

Katy Bourne: Not yet.

The Chair: Those small shopkeepers will not have CCTV. How easy is it to get a prosecution of a shoplifter in one of those smaller stores without CCTV evidence being available?

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman: A lot of the stores have CCTV; it is commonplace in relation to stores. It is more the intimidation and nuisance factor and the persistence of that individual going into the store. It is about looking at those additional measures that we can put in place, and the judicial system can put in place, around somebody who is persistent in what they are doing. I am not 100% aware that not having CCTV is a huge problem for small retailers, but we want to work with any retailer out there that needs us in relation to preventing those individuals causing a problem and capturing them, hence us working across that broad range of providers to make sure that we are in a position to be able to support.

The Chair: Unless any colleagues have any last-minute questions, I thank all three of you. We are learning a lot, and you are real experts, so we are enormously grateful for the information you have given us. There will be a transcript of the proceedings and you will have an opportunity to check that you are happy with what is on it. Much more importantly, I am sure that you will follow our deliberations over the coming weeks. Where you find there is something that, clearly, we do not understand or have not got right, or there is additional information that you think we need, please feel free to contact us quickly and make sure that we are not going down the wrong path. On behalf of the entire committee, thank you all very much.

WRITTEN EVIDENCE

Paul Gerrard, Campaigns, Public Affairs and Board Secretariat Director, The Co-Op — Written evidence (TSL0011) 

Following the evidence session on 10 September 2024 concerning retail crime and violence and abuse against Shopworkers, I agreed to send further information and data in writing in relation to three areas:

• latest position in terms of frequency of retail crime and incidents of violence and abuse in the Co-op Group;
• the Co-op Group response to crime, violence and abuse in terms of investment and its impact on levels of crime;
• police response both before and after the publication of the Retail Crime Action Plan in October 2023 and the Police/Co-op partnerships

Retail crime and incidents of violence and abuse in the Co-op Group

The Co-op Group, over and above our Funeralcare, insurance and legal services businesses, runs 2,400 retail stores which are predominantly small format, convenience stores and we also wholesale to over 6,000 plus convenience stores including NISA and Costcutter

In relation to our own stores, we saw a significant rise in crime of 44% rise crime in our stores in 2023 compared to 2022 and we have crime continue to rise in 2024, albeit at a slower scale, with overall crime up 3% in 2024 so far. The graph below sets out the number of incidents of crime in our stores from 2020.

(Note – 2024 data is from January to September only)

In relation, to violence and abuse we saw a 35% rise in violence and abuse, threats and ASB in 2023 compared to 2022. We have seen violence incidents decline by 8% in 2024 while abuse, threats and ASB has risen again by 6%. The graphs below set out the number of these incidents in our stores from 2020.

(Note – 2024 data is from January to September only)

Financially, this level of crime has cost the Co-op in excess of £70 million per year in terms of losses and there are stores whose commercial viability is being put in danger because of the levels of crime.

Co-op Group response to crime, violence and abuse in terms of investment

The Co-op has for many years invested heavily in prevention and security measures because we believe absolutely that the first responsibility to keep colleagues and stores safe is for the business and at the Co-op, we take that very seriously.

Over the last 5 years, the Co-op has spent £200m on measures in store over the last five years to keep colleagues and stores safe. In comparison to the sector, this represents three times more than the convenience sector average.

This investment has included state of the art CCTV connected to a central control room, body worn cameras, headsets, additional guarding, product protection and store redesign.

However, the threat is constantly changing so our investment needs to address these new risks. For example, we have seen a rise in kiosk breaches with 3 every single day in 2023 so we have invested more than £4m in 170 new, more secure kiosks which has seen kiosk breaches reduce by 15% so far in 2024.

Rates of Crime in the Co-op compared to the broader Retail Sector

We are not aware of any other retailer who regularly publishes the number of incidents in their stores. Therefore, any comparison based on actual data of relative crime levels at other store or indeed at national level between retailers is not possible.

Nonetheless, where comparison is possible, the 2,400 stores in the Co-op Group appear to under-index in relation to volume of crime compared to the national picture.

The Association of Convenience Stores Crime Survey 2024 estimated 5.6 million crimes from data collected in relation to 8,200 stores. In these totals, the Co-op account for 336,000 incidents from its 2,400 stores. This means that the Co-op accounted for 29% of stores in the sample but only 6% of the crimes reported.

Similarly, the British Retail Consortium’s Crime Report 2024 reported 16.7 million crimes from around 30,000 stores of its members who contributed to the survey. Again, in these totals, the Co-op account for 336,000 incidents from its 2,400 stores which means that the Co-op accounted for 8% of stores but only 2% of the crimes reported.

Police response to Retail Crime

The Co-op has two sets of data which relate to police attendance at our stores which we have used to assess police response rate in the absence of any regular data sources from the police.

The first data set is the police’s own data provided through a Freedom of Information (FoI) by individual forces which asked individual police forces how many times they have been contacted concerning an incident at a Co-op store, how many times they have attended a Co-op store and how many people have been charged as a result in the first three months of 2023.

It is worth bearing in mind that my colleagues will only report to the police the most serious incidents and not minor or trivial incidents. Therefore, this data broadly shows the police response rate to serious incidents which colleagues had reported.

Nationally, we received responses to our Freedom of Information (FoI) from around 80% of police forces and 80% of those forces who responded have provided data. This data shows an attendance rate of just 30% which means the police did not attend nationally in 70% of cases. In addition, the FoI showed a charging rate of just 15% in the first three months of 2023 where the police had attended.

In addition, as described in the evidence session, the Co-op’s security contractor deploys specialist guarding teams, who operate undercover in stores on a risk basis and will detain offenders in store using citizen arrest powers when those individuals are committing crime.

The graph below shows the quarterly police response rate nationally in 2023 and 2024.

This data shows that before the publication of the Retail Crime Action Plan in October 2023, where our specialist guarding teams asked for police attendance to take further action for an offender who they were detaining in store, nationally, the police attended in 22% such occasions. In those circumstances, of course, we have no option but to let the offender go.

It also shows that in the twelve months since the publication of the Retail Crime Action Plan, we have seen an improved response where our specialist teams have detained an offender with police attending in 64% of occasions.

Co-op and Police Partnership

The Co-op have actively pursued partnerships with police forces and our Police Partnership model uses our data to target persistent and prolific offenders by working tactically in hotspot locations with numerous police forces.

As of September 2024, we have 13 partnerships live in Sussex, Kent, Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton, West Midlands, Leeds, Merseyside, Cleveland, Durham, Northumbria, Croydon and Nottingham.

During 2023, our Police Partnerships managed 159 offenders but as the table below shows we have already seen 317 offenders managed or awaiting sentence in the first 9 months of 2024. The table below sets out the results for our Police Partnerships in the first 9 months of 2024.

Association of Convenience Stores — Written evidence (TSL0010)   

1. ACS (the Association of Convenience Stores) welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee’s inquiry into shoplifting. We represent over 50,000 convenience stores across the UK that employ 445,000 people.[1]

• In the last year, we estimate there were 76,000 incidents of violence against people working in local shops and over 1.2m incidents of verbal abuse. Convenience retailers have invested £339 million in crime prevention measures in their stores, equivalent to £6,838 per site.

• The full findings of ACS’ Crime Report 2024 are available here.

• We have set out some key points regarding shop theft and other forms of retail crime. Please note we have made similar points in our submission to the Home Affairs Select Committee’s inquiry into violence and abuse towards retail workers. However, they are equally relevant to this committee’s inquiry.

Recent shoplifting trends

• As demonstrated in Figure 1 below, ACS has produced a shop theft index since 2012 which records the net increase of shop theft rates every year. Shop theft rates fell in 2020 during the pandemic but returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2022. Since the middle of 2021, rates have increased year-on-year to reach record levels in 2023/2024.

Figure 1. Shop Theft Index

• Some reports in the media have suggested that the cost-of-living crisis is driving high rates of shop theft in the retail sector. Our data supports this too with 67% of retailers saying this had impacted the level of shop theft. However, when we speak to retailers, they do not suggest that the rise of shop theft is the result of household budgets being squeezed and people turning to theft. Instead, retailers have reported that prolific offenders are having to steal more to support an alcohol or drug addiction or as part of organised criminality.[2] Prolific offenders often use violence and aggression towards shopworkers to escape or deter shopworkers from challenging them.

• 76% of retailers are also reporting that the levels of organised criminality targeting shops has increased in the last year.[3] There is a huge range of organised criminality experienced by local shops. Generally, convenience retailers are experiencing local organised criminality, where small gangs will steal products to order, or use distraction techniques to enable them to clear out shelves of high value items, such as alcohol, coffee or meat. This type of localised organised criminality differs from the organised criminality that Operation Pegasus is attempting to address, which focuses on criminals working across police forces areas and targeting retailers’ supply chains. These types of partnerships are important – businesses and the state should work together to fund the tackling retail crime. If offenders are taken out of the system than it is likely that all businesses will benefit, regardless of whether they participate. However, we need more of a focus on localised strategies to comprehensively address retail crime.

• Shop theft affects all shops regardless of size, location, products sold or the demography where they trade. However, there are factors which affect the vulnerability of convenience stores. ACS’ Local Shop Report 2024 shows that the majority of convenience retailers trade from either isolated locations (33%) or are located on a small shopping parade (40%) with less than five retail/ service businesses close by.  This often means that convenience retailers do not sit within the reach of Business Crime Reduction Partnerships, Business Improvement districts or town centre operated radio link schemes.

• In addition, they would not benefit from specific town centre police patrols. The risk for convenience retailers is that proactive activity to tackle retail crime in town centres or on larger high streets inadvertently diverts retail crime problems to the secondary locations they trade.  This is why advocated for the government and police forces to have a prolific offender strategy, making sure that interventions reach offenders committing shop theft and anti-social behaviour. We also want to ensure that when the government talks about a “Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, restoring patrols to our town centres”, it must also encompass secondary shopping parades based in local neighbourhoods.

Rise of violence in retail crime

1. Shop theft is a key trigger of violence in the retail sector. In line with the rise of shop theft, violence and abuse against shopworkers has also been increasing since the middle of 2021. ACS’ quarterly tracker polling of violence towards retailers and shopworkers indicates that the levels of violence have increased on pre-pandemic levels (see Figure 2). ACS’ polling of 1,200 retailers asks them to indicate if violence in stores has increased, decreased or stayed the same. The net score of these answers gives us an index of convenience retailers’ experience of violence in their stores.

1. Figure 2 shows that the levels of violence have increased on pre-pandemic levels. February 2024 had an index score of +11 compared to a score of +5 in November 2022. The level of violence from November 2023 was at the highest level recorded, with a score of +14. The record levels of violence towards shopworkers are extremely worrying, with shopworkers regularly facing violence and verbal abuse when serving the public. ACS’ Crime Report 2024 found that there were an estimated 76,000 incidents of violence and 1.2m incidents of verbal abuse in the sector.[4]

Figure 2. ACS Violence Index

1. Retailers tell us that the rise of violence and abuse is having an impact on retailers’ ability to recruit and retain staff. Data from ACS’ Colleague Survey 2024 has found that 21% of staff face verbal abuse every week and 36% face physical violence every few months at work.[5] Further, 44% of colleagues tell us that verbal abuse has increased in the last 12 months and 27% have told us that violence has increased.[6]
2. An USDAW survey in 2023 found that 30% of shopworkers are considering changing their job due to the extent of verbal abuse, threats and assaults.[7] Further, the Retail Trust conducted a survey in 2023 which found that 47% of shopworkers feel unsafe at work.[8] The level of violence is unacceptable, and we need help from the police to address this issue

The support retailers receive and its sufficiency

1. Retailers are investing record levels to protect their shops. Our Crime Report 2024 shows that the sector has invested £339m in the last year, with £6,838 spent on average per store.[9] The top areas of investment include CCTV, security staff, staff training on crime management, intruder alarms and internal radios. Retailers are also investing in facial recognition. There is a risk facial recognition can increase harassment levels as store colleagues choose to challenge offenders more, however, theft levels do drop in stores where facial recognition is used.

1. Retailers’ investment is growing and is substantial but we need greater support from government to invest in crime prevention equipment so all businesses can access it. We want the Government to support investment in crime prevention equipment, whether through tax relief or direct funding. We also need police and regulators to provide clarity on how to use new technologies such as facial recognition, to deter criminals.

1. Police are focusing more attention on retail crime in recent years. This is important because PCCs set the budgets and priorities for local police forces. An overview of some of the work that PCCs have done to address retail crime has been collated by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in their report: In Focus: Tackling Business and Retail Crime[10].

1. However, there is still work to be done. Our 2024 Crime Report finds that retailers’ satisfaction level with the police continues to be very low.[11] Of polled retailers, 43% reported being very dissatisfied with the time taken for police to respond to a criminal incident in their stores; 50% reported being very dissatisfied with the police’s investigation of incidents; and 61% were very disappointed with the sanctions issued to the offenders of the crime.[12] Further, 35% of retailers are very dissatisfied with the ease of reporting crime.[13]

1. We want to facilitate better working relationships between retailers and the police. We believe one of the key areas for action is improving the process for retailers to be able to report crime to the police and having clear expectations about when police will respond – the National Retail Crime Action Plan is a step in right direction. We also want to see greater neighbourhood patrols in the places where our members trade. As 33% of our stores are located in isolated locations and 40% on small shopping parades, many are out of the scope of BCRPS. Therefore, police presence in and near our shops is crucial in preventing crime.

1. Police forces across the UK have different online reporting systems, which retailers often find challenging to use and to share evidence with the police, such as CCTV, to support following up on reasonable lines of enquiry.  We have written to PCCs encouraging police forces to publish how they want retailers to report retail crime and where they can share evidence such as CCTV footage with the police[14].

The Retail Crime Action Plan

• The introduction of the National Retail Crime Action Plan is a welcome development. The guidelines established in the plan, including that police should prioritise attendance at the scene of crimes where violence has been used and that hot spot patrolling should be increased, can make a real difference for retailers. We welcome early indications that the plan is having an impact, with a dip sample of 31 police forces across 1,500 crimes reviewed and police attending 60% where violence was used[15]. 

• However, it remains too early in the process to measure the full impact of the plan and it is important to note that the plan is only guidance. We need PCCs and Chief Constables to translate the guidance into action by committing to deliver the plan in their Police and Crime Plans and holding officers to account on operational delivery. We also need ongoing scrutiny of the implementation of the plan at national level with regular updates to the National Retail Crime Steering Group, which is chaired by the Policing Minister, and via the National Police Chief Councils.

• We believe there are few key areas that should be focused on:

–       Attendance by police when violence is used: Whenever violence is used in a retail setting, we expect the police to attend and gather evidence to support with investigating offenders.

–       Following reasonable lines of enquiry: 96% of convenience stores have CCTV cameras, therefore it will be possible to share evidence when shop theft or violence occurs. Enhancing the use of online reporting systems to enabling the sharing of evidence efficiently will be essential to deter and detect criminal activity in shops. 

–       Prolific offender strategies: Most shop theft and violence incidents are committed by repeat offenders known to the police, retailers and wider community. Identifying these individuals and targeting resources at ensuring that they cannot continue to offend unchecked.

• ACS’ Crime Report 2024 make several recommendations for both Police and Crime Commissioners and national government. [16]

Recommendations for National Government

• Deliver justice for shopworkers and effective sanctions for offenders: We welcome the announcement that the Government will introduce a standalone offence for attacks on retail workers as part of the Crime and Policing Bill. The introduction of a similar standalone offence in Scotland has led to, in the period August 2021 – February 2024, a total of 10,295 reported incidents, 3,607 charges and 1,199 convictions. The Government should introduce this Bill as soon as parliamentary time allows.

• Additional police resources must be focused on neighbourhood policing: Commitments to increase the number of police officers are welcome, but only if this delivers a rise in neighbourhood policing patrols in hot spot areas, like high streets and local shopping parades.
• Support investment in technology to deter and detect criminals: The Government should introduce incentives for investment in crime prevention equipment. The Home Office should co-ordinate a working group to increase the synergy between retailers’ and police forces’ use of technology to tackle retail crime. CCTV, facial recognition, and evidence sharing platforms can be powerful tools to detect and deter criminals.

Recommendations for Police and Crime Commissioners

• Include the National Retail Crime Action Plan in PCC’s Police and Crime Plan: All Police and Crime Commissioners should commit to deliver the National Retail Crime Action Plan in their Police and Crime Plans.

• Develop a prolific offender strategy: Every Police and Crime Commissioner should have a strategy in place to identify prolific offenders that target high streets and local shopping parades. The majority of shop theft offences are committed by a small number of prolific offenders that often have drug addiction issues.

• Make it easier for retailers to report crime and share evidence online: It is difficult and time consuming for retailers to report crime and share evidence with the police. Investing in consistent online reporting platforms would increase reporting levels and evidence shared with the police.
• Tackle alcohol and drug addiction: Addiction is the primary motivator of repeat offenders, who commit the majority of the crime in the convenience sector. A greater focus is needed on addiction rehabilitation services to break the cycle of offending. We worked with The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) to deliver a report; ‘Desperate for a Fix’.[17] The report advocates for the introduction of second-chance programmes that provide a clear alternative to prison. There are already effective examples that PCCs should consider, including then Offender to Recovery Programme in the West Midlands police force area. PCCs should invest in rehabilitation initiatives such as this.

3 October 2024

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[1] ACS Local Shop Report, 2024.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] ACS Crime Report 2024.

[5] ACS Colleague Survey, 2024.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Usdaw survey, March 2023.

[8] Retail Trust survey, November 2023.

[9] ACS Crime Report, 2024.

[10] APCC, In Focus: Tackling Business and Retail Crime, 2024.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Stop Shop Theft Campaign

[15] NPCC: Policing Retail Crime Action Plan shows early impact

[16] Ibid.

[17] CSJ, Desperate for Fix, 2018.

Professor Emmeline Taylor, Professor of Criminology, School of Policy and Global Affairs, City St George’s, University of London — Written evidence (TSL0009)   

It was an honour and a privilege to be invited to provide oral evidence to the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee on the 3^rd of September 2024. The Chair asked for me to provide additional evidence and clarification on several key points which I have outlined below:

The Chair asked if I could clarify the distinction between “low value” shoplifting (where the value of the goods are less than £200) and theft from a shop where the value of goods exceed £200.

Theft is defined by Section 1 of the Theft Act 1968as the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention to permanently deprive the other of it. “Shoplifting” is the term used by the Home Office and the police to record theft (regardless of value) from a shop to distinguish it from other types of theft and its location (e.g. theft from a vehicle). Different rules for prosecuting what is termed “low-value shoplifting” (that is theft from a shop of goods valued at under £200) were introduced under Section 176 the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 which determined it to be a summary-only offence.

• If the goods are worth less than £200, the maximum sentence is six months’ custody.
• If the goods are worth more than £200, the maximum sentence is seven years’ custody.[1]

The legislation was introduced with the intention of creating a more efficient procedure for defendants who were likely to plead guilty.[2] Offences could be considered for police-led prosecution rather than referring them to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) thus freeing up police, CPS and court time. However, in the period since the introduction of S176 there has been a decline in all types of punishments for shop thieves including penalty notices, cautions and the number of offenders pursued in the courts. For example, there has been a 98% reduction in the number of penalty notices issued to shop thieves in the year to March 2024 (n=431) compared to the same period a decade ago (19,419).[3] It has been suggested that the introduction of “low-value shoplifting” inadvertently led to a widespread withdrawal of enforcement activity for theft of goods of a value less than £200 (although other factors will have coalesced with the legislative change).

The Chair asked if I could provide some more information on schemes and partnerships which have proven successful from an international perspective e.g. the INFORM Consumers Act, and whether there are international experiences from which the UK can learn.

There are examples of legislation and police operational practices from other countries, and locally, that can provide possible lessons. In the United States, the Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers Act, known as the ‘INFORM Consumers Act’, is a federal law that came into effect in June 2023 and requires e-commerce marketplaces to collect, verify and disclose identifying information about high-volume third-party sellers.[4] The law makes it harder for those knowingly selling stolen goods to operate in a relatively anonymous and risk-free space. In addition, there are many examples of policing operations that seek to target prolific / repeat offenders and/or disrupt the onward sale of stolen goods. For example, South Australia’s Operation Measure and, closer to home, Nottinghamshire Police’s Operation Motivation, show great promise although neither have been formally evaluated. More broadly on this point, disrupting the trade of stolen goods would be a worthwhile focus to begin to deny the benefit that organised retail criminals and local prolific offenders derive from their criminal activities.

The Chair invited me to provide my thoughts on what the Committee should recommend at the conclusion of the inquiry. I have synthesised these below.

The recommendations that I have made over several years have been published in multiple reports including It’s Not Part of the Job[5] and Stealing with Impunity[6]. Some of those recommendations have been supported by the previous government and, more recently, committed to in the Kings Speech (e.g. introducing a standalone offence for attacking a shopworker while performing their duties and repealingSection 176 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act). I have outlined four outstanding key recommendations below but first I have taken the liberty of outlining a possible structure to visualise some of the recommendations and how they interlink. 

1. Establish a National Retail Crime Intelligence Bureau

Chronic under reporting of shop theft frustrates the ability to formulate effective strategic action. Yet the sheer scale of criminal activity in the retail sector undermines any realistic prospect of reporting and recording all incidents. Furthermore, if the majority of incidents were indeed reported, it would potentially quadruple police recorded crime. Replicating an already existing, tried and tested model developed for another high-volume crime type – fraud – and applying it to retail crime could enable the collation and analysis of multiple data sources and provide actionable intelligence on repeat, prolific and organised offenders. A national intelligence bureau would avoid overwhelming the police with the high-volume of shop theft incidents and provide instead for the targeting of resource to those with ‘solvability factors’—in essence the bureau would establish whether there is a realistic prospect of identifying the offender before passing to the police. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau and Action Fraud are funded by the Home Office. Given the current fiscal context, it is suggested that options to fund the RCIB (and associated functions) are explored and could include a combination of sources including retailers (it is notable that retailers have been willing to financially support policing operations such as the retail strand of Opal), Safer Streets funds, proceeds of crime funds, money previously used to fund the Home Office Commercial Victimisation Survey (CVS), and academic research councils.  

• Formalise structures to support Business Crime Reduction Partnerships (BCRPs)

A Business Crime Reduction Partnership (BCRP) is a subscription-based, business-led, non-profit making action group working with police and the local authority to tackle and reduce crime and disorder affecting businesses. They have huge potential to drive communication and collaboration between the police, local businesses and local authorities on crime-related issues that directly impact on business as well as the surrounding areas more broadly. Funding remains an issue for the majority of standalone BCRPs (i.e. those that are not part of or funded by Business Improvement Districts (BIDs)) and this undermines their ability to operate strategically and undertake long-term planning. Suggestions for more sustainable funding models for BCRPs include the proceeds of crime funds (POCA), the commissioning of service delivery by the local authority in receipt of national government funding, and Police and Crime Commissioners. It is recommended that in reference to work already undertaken[7] and in the context of the Community Safety Partnerships Review[8], the potential of BCRPs to play a more central role in tackling local criminal behaviour (including antisocial behaviour) be explored. 

• Appoint an Independent Advisor / Oversight Board and map existing provision to tackle retail crime.

There is currently a large amount of activity at national and local level to tackle the rise in retail crime and associated offending. There are also many police and industry groups focusing on retail crime, including the National Business Crime Centre, Opal (with the “Pegasus” strand focusing on organised retail crime), Business Crime Reduction Partnerships (BCRPs) and Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). It is recommended that the Home Office/Ministry of Justice appoint an Independent Advisor to support delivery of the strategies relating to business crime, ensure that the objectives in the Retail Crime Action Plan are first measurable, and second, upheld, assist in the coordination of efforts at national level to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour in and around shops, influence the development of evidence-based policy, and continue to improve the criminal justice system’s response to retail crime and associated offending activity, in all its manifestations. The landscape of activity is complex and there runs the risk of overlapping and competing activity, whereas other important activity might fall through the gaps. It is suggested that the Oversight Board first conduct a mapping exercise of existing provision to identify potential duplication and gaps. There is also a notable lack of evidence of ‘what works’ to tackle shop theft both from a prevention and enforcement perspective e.g. the relative effectiveness of Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBOs), electronic monitoring, custody etc. or how technology could be used and to what effect (e.g. facial recognition).

• Target the stolen goods markets and criminal exploitation

The onward sale of stolen goods has evolved with the use of online marketplaces. Taking inspiration from other countries that have regulated online marketplaces (e.g., the INFORM Consumers Act in the USA), regulations should be considered to make it harder for those knowingly selling stolen goods to operate anonymously. This could include a requirement for online marketplaces to collect, verify and disclose identifying information about high-volume third-party sellers. Focusing the lens on those who sell on or directly profit from the onward sale of stolen goods (often a different individual to the person stealing) could enable ethe disruption of those markets. 

1 October 2024

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[1] See ‘Shoplifting’, Sentencing Council. Available at: https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/outlines/shoplifting/

[2] Home Office (2014) ‘Implementing Section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014: Low value shoplifting’ Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7deff5ed915d74e33eefe2/low_value_shop_theft_guidance.pdf.

[3] See analysis by The Times ‘Police have given up on punishing offenders’ (27^th August 2024).

[4] Further information on the INFORM Consumers Act is available here: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/INFORMAct

[5] Available at: https://assets.ctfassets.net/5ywmq66472jr/22QfMejeWYbimJ9ykX9W9h/0e99f15c0ed24c16ab74d38b42d5129a/It_s_not_part_of_the_job_report.pdf

[6] Available at: https://assets.ctfassets.net/5ywmq66472jr/3Re0b6dWQGHGCd1KW5iMDo/00caf6bc62f8b4062aa92663cd5b11b4/20240206_-_STEALING_WITH_IMPUNITY.pdf

[7] Taylor, E. (2022) Business Crime Reduction Partnerships: Enhancing Value and Promoting Success. Available at: https://nbcc.police.uk/images/2022/NEWS%202022/BCRP%20NBCC%20Final%20Report%202022.pdf

[8] See Gov.UK ‘Community Safety Partnerships’: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/community-safety-partnerships/community-safety-partnerships. 

My Local Bobby and TM Eye— Written evidence (TSL0008)  

We submit this letter for consideration as written evidence to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee (Lords) in relation to Retail Crime.

My Local Bobby was established in 2016 in response to increasingly stretched police resources and budgets, with a clear mission to ‘create safer communities’ and ‘eliminate the fear of crime’.

Over the past eight years, we have grown into a full-service security company, managing 18 residential beats, 16 public realm beats on behalf of Business Improvement Districts (BID’s), and various bespoke security services for high-profile clients. My Local Bobby has significantly contributed to reducing crime and anti-social behaviour across the areas we operate.

My Local Bobby now operate across many high profile and busy areas of London and the suburbs with beats in Kings Road, Knightsbridge, Kensington, Fitzrovia, Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Regent Street (Lower), Streatham, Tulse Hill, Acton, Ealing, Richmond, Putney, Battersea, Clapham, Vauxhall, Tottenham Court Road and outside London in Milton Keynes and Ipswich.

Using a proactive, collaborative approach grounded in the ‘Broken Windows’ strategy, we have become the UK’s most effective public realm security services provider. Our focus on preventing low-level crime not only deters more serious criminal activity but also fosters a sense of safety and community cohesion.

Our team has expanded to include over 100 fully SIA-qualified Bobbies, 8 detectives on our Prolific Crimes Team targeting shoplifters and pick pockets, and a dedicated operations team. This group is supported by a fleet of 20 patrol vehicles and 2 area cars. My Local Bobby is supported by 20 highly experienced detectives from TM Eye, its sister company, who prepare and submit criminal case files for private criminal prosecutions.

One of the most significant challenges faced by retailers today is the rise in retail crime, particularly theft. Due to a lack of police resources, retail crimes often go unattended or unresolved. In response, My Local Bobby has taken the initiative to prosecute offenders through private criminal prosecutions for thefts over £200, going equipped to steal, and burglary. This strategy has been highly effective in over 300 private prosecutions, with a 100% conviction rate. The resulting reduction in offending across all the beats has been dramatic.

My Local Bobby has successfully deployed teams of ‘Bobbies’ in areas we work, in close partnership with local councils, ensuring that our services are not only effective but also adaptable to the needs of each area. Our presence is a highly visible deterrent to crime and our collaboration with Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) has led to significant and sustainable reductions in crime and anti-social behaviour.

Our dedicated Prolific Crimes Team, an undercover unit, focuses specifically on detaining and prosecuting individuals involved in retail theft and violent crimes against retail staff. We have achieved unparalleled success in reducing retail crime, leading to safer working environments for employees and a more secure experience for customers.

Transparency and accountability are cornerstones of our operations. All incidents are recorded via body-worn cameras and meticulously logged in our reporting system. This ensures that all stakeholders, local authorities, businesses, and law enforcement, receive accurate and timely information, allowing for a coordinated response to incidents.

Our bespoke Shop-Safe Alert intelligence system is a dedicated platform that facilitates real-time communication and intelligence-sharing among key stakeholders, including our Bobbies on the beat, law enforcement, and local communities. By employing retired police analysts and local intelligence officers, we can map crime trends and link offenses to known offenders. This approach provides us with a detailed understanding of criminal activity, allowing us to take a proactive stance in crime prevention.

Our retail clients and Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) have consistently reported feeling significantly safer, both at work and during their commutes. Many have expressed that they “finally feel safe” in their daily routines.

The team have adopted an innovative and very successful strategy by using ‘Trespass Notices’, that are served on all offenders when detained for retail crime offences. The notice informs them that they will be considered a ‘trespasser’ if caught offending in that same area or premises at a future date. Should that person then be caught again, consideration will be given to prosecuting them for burglary rather than just theft. This allows the courts greater sentencing powers and the ability to impose realistic orders for those prolific offenders who have drug or alcohol addictions. Most private prosecutions brough by My Local Bobby / TM Eye are now for burglary. The impact of this has strategy has seen significant results.

The success of our private criminal prosecutions, particularly for theft and burglary, has been a pivotal factor in reducing crime in these areas. However, for this approach to achieve broader, sustainable success, greater cooperation from retailers is essential.

Active support from retailers by providing necessary evidence, such as CCTV footage and witness statements, plays a vital role in successful prosecutions.

A key challenge we face is the non-intervention policy adopted by many major retailers, which not only prevents physical intervention by security staff but also hinders the collection of such evidence. Many major retailers whilst complaining about lack of support, then refuse to supply the evidence, CCTV and witness statements to bring a successful prosecution. We have seen a similar problem with police led investigations and prosecutions. We urge greater cooperation from retailers to ensure that private prosecutions can continue to be an effective tool in tackling retail crime.

We call for greater support from retailers in tackling the challenges of retail crime, particularly in the provision of evidence for prosecutions. By working together, we are confident that we can create safer retail environments and more secure communities for all.

Robust enforcement through prosecutions, whether brought by police / CPS or private prosecutors works.

My Local Bobby’s success in ‘creating safer communities’ and ‘eliminating the fear of crime’ is driven by our innovative, data-driven, and community-focused approach to security, encompassed by our ‘Broken Windows’ strategy. By working closely with BIDs, local councils, law enforcement, and businesses, we have demonstrated that a proactive, collaborative model can deliver lasting reductions in crime and anti-social behaviour.

Superintendent Patrick Holdaway, National Business Crime Centre, City of London Police — Written evidence (TSL0007)  

I am writing to you in my capacity as lead for the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC), hosted by the City of London Police. This letter is intended to be taken as written evidence by the Justice and Home Affairs Committee.

The NBCC was created in 2017 to provide strategic oversight by acting as a conduit between all United Kingdom police forces and businesses in respect of business crime by sharing advice and trends nationally. The NBCC plays a leading role in the delivery of the Retail Crime Action Plan, launched in 2023.

Further to your Committee’s oral evidence session on 3 September, I wanted to comment in relation to the subject of a dedicated offence of violence against a shopworker. I do not believe that the introduction of a dedicated offence alone will deter people from assaulting shopworkers, however, from a police perspective it will allow police forces to better identify offences. Currently assaults against shopworkers are recorded in the same way as any other assault, which makes it difficult to identify those against shopworkers. When we can identify this group, it will be easier to compare performance by forces, identify best practice and assess the success, or otherwise, of crime prevention initiatives. 

The NBCC is an unfunded unit which has survived due to the generosity of the City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police Service with seconded posts; however, since 2020 the team has never exceeded more than four officers. As I write today, I am the only member of staff in the team. I would add that the NBCC is supported through ad hoc grants from the Home Office, which whilst welcomed, are often short term and for specific pieces of work. 

One example of the work conducted by the NBCC is the identification of a need to review the Business Crime Reduction Partnership accreditation scheme which was not performing as well as it could. The NBCC successfully applied for Home Office funding to commission Prof. Emmeline Taylor to conduct an academic review. Using the findings, the NBCC set up a standards board, of which it provides the secretariat, and through its website (nbcc.police.uk) communicates the outcomes. It could be argued that without the NBCC providing that central leadership, none of this would be possible.  

Report and recommendations to enhance BCRPs released by NBCC  

If you require any more information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

The National Business Crime Solution — Written evidence (TSL0006) 

Introduction

The National Business Crime Solution (NBCS), an organisation that specialises in tackling business crime. Our submission draws from extensive industry experience and insights into the growing impact of retail crime on local, regional, and national levels. This evidence is based on our work with retail businesses and law enforcement agencies, with a particular focus on the importance of data and intelligence sharing and collaboration. We believe that coordinated efforts across the retail sector and law enforcement are critical to addressing the issue of retail crime effectively.

Summary of Key Points:

• Rising retail crime: Crime impacting the retail community is on the rise, and without immediate action, it poses a significant threat to businesses and local economies.
• Collaboration is key: Enhanced cooperation between the retail industry and law enforcement is essential to tackle retail crime.
• Standardised offender management: A national offender management programme, leveraging the expertise and infrastructure of existing organisations, should be developed to provide a coordinated and sustainable response to retail crime.
• Funding allocation: There is a pressing need for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) to allocate funding specifically to tackle retail crime, ensuring dedicated resources to mitigate this issue.

Background

The NBCS, established in 2012, is the UK’s largest not-for-profit, member-owned, and member-led business crime data and intelligence sharing organisation. NBCS focuses on tackling organised and local repeat offenders who pose a significant risk to the safety of retail staff and the profitability of businesses across the country.

NBCS represents over 100 national retail brands, including prominent names such as The Co-op Group, Tesco, and Next. We work closely with all 43 police forces across the UK under a national framework, facilitated by a national police Information Sharing Agreement. This agreement ensures that intelligence on business crime is shared efficiently and effectively between the retail sector and law enforcement.

Currently, NBCS holds the most comprehensive retail crime data set in the UK, providing us with an unparalleled view of how crime impacts the retail sector and the police response to these challenges. Our unique position enables us to offer valuable insights into trends, offender profiles, and the effectiveness of crime reduction strategies across the country.

The introduction of Project Pegasus to enhance police visibility and response to organised retail crime was well-received, with NBCS being one of the contributing parties on behalf of members. However, the project primarily targets high-level criminal empires, which traditional policing has struggled to penetrate due to limited resources. There are also concerns about the financial sustainability and return on investment for retailers funding the initiative long-term.

While Pegasus is welcome, most retail crime comes from local repeat offenders, who pose significant risks to staff safety. Paul Gerard from the Co-op has highlighted the effectiveness of solutions like NBCS Connect Direct, a national offender management program targeting local prolific offenders through coordinated efforts between retailers, police, and business crime reduction partnerships.

1. The Growing Impact of Retail Crime

Over the past two years, the NBCS member and partner network has faced unprecedented levels of retail crime, encompassing a wide range of criminal activities including violence, abuse, theft, fraud, and anti-social behaviour. The scale and frequency of these crimes have increased significantly, creating an urgent need for more effective prevention and enforcement strategies. Retailers have reported a notable escalation in aggressive behaviour towards staff, often linked to attempts at theft or fraud. This rise in retail crime not only threatens the safety and wellbeing of employees but also impacts the financial viability of businesses, particularly smaller retailers.

2. Need for Collaboration

Retail crime is complex and requires a collaborative approach between the retail sector and law enforcement. Currently, there are challenges in sharing information due to inconsistent practices and lack of resources. NBCS has successfully demonstrated that when businesses and law enforcement collaborate, crime rates decline. We recommend establishing a national framework, owned by retail businesses, and utilising skills for seamless intelligence sharing on offenders and crime patterns, from the expertise of organizations like NBCS, Retailers Against Crime, and Safer Business Network, which already have the experience and capacity to manage data-sharing on a national scale. Triaging the data and providing the Police with the essential detail needed for them to react. There are discussions regarding a olice funded intelligence model but with a cost eye wateringly estimated at £2m! In reality if the home office were to match existing retail funding into the three main data and intelligence lead organisations the cost would be a fraction of that proposed.

3. A National Offender Management Programme

To address the growing number of local repeat offenders, we propose a standardised national offender management programme. Modelled after successful initiatives like NBCS Connect Direct, this program would take a collaborative, cost-efficient approach and be easily scalable nationwide. A partnership between public and private sectors is essential to fund and govern the program, ensuring long-term sustainability and a coordinated response to prolific offenders.

Summary

Retail crime is rising significantly, posing serious threats to staff safety and business sustainability. To address this, the NBCS emphasises the importance of increased collaboration between retailers and law enforcement, enhanced data-sharing, and coordinated strategies.

We recommend the establishment of a standardised national offender management programme, modelled on successful initiatives like NBCS Connect Direct, to effectively manage repeat offenders. This programme should be funded through public-private partnerships to ensure long-term success.

By leveraging the expertise and infrastructure of existing organisations and creating a national framework for data sharing, we can reduce retail crime and protect businesses and communities across the UK.

Big Brother Watch — Written evidence (TSL0005) 

About Big Brother Watch

Big Brother Watch is a civil liberties and privacy campaigning organisation, fighting for a free future. We’re determined to reclaim our privacy and defend freedoms at this time of enormous technological change. We’re a fiercely independent, non-partisan and non-profit group who work to roll back the surveillance state and protect rights in parliament, the media or the courts if we have to. We publish unique investigations and pursue powerful public campaigns. We work relentlessly to inform, amplify and empower the public voice so we can collectively reclaim our privacy, defend our civil liberties and protect freedoms for the future.

Written Submission

1. Big Brother Watch welcomes the opportunity to brief members of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee as part of their inquiry into ‘Tackling Shoplifting’, following your recent evidence sessions of 21 May and 3 September, which featured discussions on facial recognition surveillance. Our submission focuses on the data protection, justice and human rights implications of using live facial recognition surveillance in retail settings, in order that members of the Committee are provided with balance when considering this area of policymaking.
2. Live facial recognition technology works by detecting the face of every person that walks within the view of the camera. The system creates a biometric scan of every viewable person’s face; it compares those biometric scans to a database of images on a watchlist; and it flags individuals ‘matched’ by the system. When these systems are used by private retailers, individual shops, or networks of shops, must create ‘watchlists’ of unwanted individuals. There is no criminal threshold for being placed on a watchlist, and private facial recognition companies such as Facewatch do not receive information from or send information to the police – it is effectively a privatised policing system. This means individuals can be placed on a private facial recognition watchlist and blacklisted from their high street (and subscribing retailers across the region) at the discretion of a security guard, without any police report being made, let alone a fair trial, and without the individual even being informed of their being added to a watchlist. Innocent people are at serious risk of being wrongly flagged by the technology – indeed, Big Brother Watch has supported legal action for a number of people who have been either wrongly added to private watchlists or publicly ejected from stores, searched and humiliated following private facial recognition misidentifications, as documented by the BBC.[1]
3. Given the manner in which they operate, there is no way for these systems to only scan the faces of only those who are suspected of antisocial behaviour or having committed an offence. The technology processes the facial biometric data – information as sensitive as a fingerprint – of every person entering the store. This is the equivalent of performing an identity check on every single customer. Data protection and human rights laws set a high bar for the processing of such sensitive data in order to protect the privacy and security of everyone in the UK. Subjecting thousands of innocent people to biometric identity checks without justification is not only intrusive, but is also disproportionate to the aim of reducing shop theft and infringes upon the right to privacy.
4. In our view, it is highly likely that such mass, indiscriminate biometric processing by private companies for loss prevention is unlawful under GDPR. Indeed, in 2021 the Spanish Data Protection Authority issued a EUR 2,520,000 fine under GDPR to Mercadona, one of the leading supermarkets in Spain, for its use of facial recognition (AEPD, Spain – PS/00120/2021). It is notable that the use of of live facial recognition surveillance has been prohibited by regulators across Europe under the GDPR, the same data protection framework that applies in the United Kingdom.[2] Meanwhile, at a state level, the EU AI Act, passed earlier this year, broadly prohibits the use of live facial recognition surveillance by authorities given the extraordinary risks it poses to individuals’ rights and freedoms.[3]
5. The Committee should also be aware of the potential for bias and discrimination within the algorithms that power the surveillance software. Studies have shown that LFR is less accurate for people with darker skin[4] and these statistical conclusions are backed by real-life experience. Big Brother Watch is currently supporting a woman of colour who has taken legal action against Home Bargains and the facial company Facewatch, after she was misidentified by their technology, publicly accused of theft and told she was banned from all Home Bargains stores across the country as well as other major retailers who use Facewatch’s technology.[5] In subsequent correspondence with the claimant, Facewatch admitted that its technology and “super-recogniser” flagged the wrong person and produced this serious error.
6. We have received numerous reports of members of the public being flagged on these systems, approached by shop staff and accused of criminal activity and we expect that the aforementioned high-profile case and legal action we supported is only the tip of the iceberg. Outsourcing policing functions to a private company means that those who are flagged by the system have no trial process and no route to appeal. In one individual’s case we are supporting, neither the retailer nor Facewatch can provide any evidence of the alleged theft that provides the basis of their inclusion on a watchlist, and the individual strongly denies having ever stolen anything – yet the individual remains technologically blacklisted from major high street stores via live facial recognition and treated as guilty, and has no way of proving their innocence. This Kafkaesque situation is diametrically opposed to the long-standing principles of law and justice in the United Kingdom. The distress associated with being publicly misidentified and/or wrongly accused of a crime can also have wider ramifications for individuals’ lives and livelihoods, particularly if they are accused in front of their families, friends or colleagues. Companies that use LFR technologies risk not only facing data protection challenges, but also run the risk of perpetuating unlawful discrimination.
7. No laws in the UK specifically authorise, regulate or even contain the words “facial recognition”, and the use of this technology has never been debated by MPs. In recent years, parliamentarians across parties in Westminster[6] and rights and equalities groups and technology experts across the globe have called for a stop to the use of this technology.[7] The only detailed inquiry into the use of live facial recognition by a parliamentary committee called for a stop to its use.[8] In this context, the questions raised by the committee of whether LFR technology can be used for privatised “pre-emptive” policing are particularly concerning.
8. In July 2022, Big Brother Watch filed a legal complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office against the Southern Co-op and Facewatch over the supermarket’s use of Facewatch’s live facial recognition software in its stores. The Commissioner conducted an investigation, which concluded in March 2023 and found that Facewatch’s policies had breached data protection law on eight grounds, including by failing to balance the legitimate interest of  Facewatch and their subscribers against the rights and freedoms of individuals. Big Brother Watch’s research indicates that some of the changes Facewatch was resultingly required to make have not been made.
9. Live facial recognition has a serious detrimental impact on individuals’ protected rights to privacy and free expression, whilst also posing the risk of perpetuating discrimination and undermining the principles of justice. Within this context we urge the committee to refrain from in any way endorsing the use or expansion of live facial recognition surveillance in the retail sector, and at the very least to take further evidence on its legal and rights implications.

September 2024

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[1] ‘I was misidentified as shoplifter by facial recognition tech’ – BBC News, 26 May 2024:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-69055945

[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/italy-outlaws-facial-recognition-tech-except-fight-crime-2022-11-14/;  https://www.huntonak.com/privacy-and-information-security-law/spanish-dpa-fines-supermarket-chain-2520000-eur-for-unlawful-use-of-facial-recognition-system

[3] Artificial Intelligence Act: deal on comprehensive rules for trustworthy AI – European Parliament, 9th December 2023: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20231206IPR15699/artificial-intelligence-act-deal-on-comprehensive-rules-for-trustworthy-ai

[4] http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a.pdfs

[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-69055945

[6] MPs and peers call for ‘immediate stop’ to live facial recognition surveillance – Jamie Grierson, the Guardian, 6th October 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/06/mps-and-peers-call-for-immediate-stop-to-live-facial-recognition-surveillance 

[7] Over 180 Rights Groups and Tech Experts Call for UK and Worldwide Halt to Facial Recognition Surveillance – Josiah Mortimer, Byline Times, 27th September 2023: https://bylinetimes.com/2023/09/27/over-180-rights-groups-and-tech-experts-call-for-uk-and-worldwide-halt-to-facial-recognition-surveillance

[8] The work of the Biometrics Commissioner and the Forensic Science Regulator: Nineteenth Report of Session

2017–19, Science and Technology Committee, 18th July 2019, HC 1970:

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmsctech/1970/197002.html

Association of Police and Crime Commissioners — Written evidence (TSL0004) 

Introduction:

The APCC is the national membership body for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), Police, Fire and Crime Commissioners (PFCCs), Deputy Mayors and other local policing bodies across England and Wales. It supports them to fulfil their statutory role and deliver their priorities in their local police force areas, while providing national leadership and driving strategic change across policing, criminal justice, and the wider community safety landscape, to help to cut crime and keep communities safe. Business and retail crime is clear priority for PCCs, with it being highlighted as such within 86% of Police and Crime Plans.

This submission has been drafted on behalf of our national Business and Retail Crime Lead PCC Katy Bourne OBE.

At the request of the Committee this submission focuses on:

• Key statistics, figures and update on Pegasus and the work of Opal
• Funding and partnership behind Pegasus

The Committee asked for any key statistics, figures or updates about Pegasus/Opal’s operation since the evidence session on the 21 May 2024.

At the last Pegasus board meeting on 30^th August, the Opal team were able to share the most up to date data regarding their work to map and tackle serious and organised retail crime gangs. The below data covers from when the Organised Retail Crime Team began onboarding within Opal (January 2024 onwards incrementally):

• 49 arrests have taken place, linked to 15 Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) and/or High Harm Individuals. It is estimated that these individuals are responsible for £3.4m of loss to retailers.
• 2 deportations of key OCG members who were responsible for causing £205,000 worth of loss across 3 retailers over the last 3 years.
• 6 ½ years combined custodial sentences, with 3 further conspiracy charges to include over 120 offences.
• 169 identifications of previously unknown individuals which supported the reopening of previously closed investigations and lines of enquiries.
• The identification of 39 vehicles associated with and used for organised retail crime purposes.
• 74 intelligence submissions from retailers bringing industry intelligence into policing.

On the organisations involved in Pegasus:

As of September 2024, 15 retailers have committed their involvement in Pegasus. These retailers are Aldi, B&Q, Boots, Coop, Halfords, John Lewis, Lidl, M&S, Morrisons, Next, Primark, Proctor & Gamble, Sainsburys, Tesco and TJX. Alongside the 15 retailers, the Home Office and National Business Crime Solutions (NBCS) are also Pegasus members. The retailers are supported by Mitie and administration of the board is undertaken by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.

On the funding secured and how much has been contributed by which organisations:

All 15 retailers outlined in the above answer and NBCS have each committed £60k over two years. This breaks down to £30k each for 2024-25 and 2025-26 financial years. The Home Office also committed funding for one year, £30k for 2024-25.

Anything else to submit to the Committee as written evidence and any final thoughts about recommendations you would like the Committee to consider?

We continue to look ahead at the wider threat from organised business and retail crime.

We are exploring the opportunity for Pegasus to begin leading the way in establishing a better understanding of the stolen goods market – this is vital to understand and combat the demand for stolen goods as we know that often shop theft is stealing to order. This would involve engaging with those companies with online marketplaces including Amazon and Facebook and urge the committee to look at legislation introduced in the US requiring online marketplaces to disclose and verify the identity of its sellers to deter the sale of stolen, counterfeit and harmful products.

Initial talks are also planned with the freight/road haulage sector who are experiencing substantial threat and loss from OCGs and with the aviation/airport retail sector.

National Association of Business Crime Partnerships — Written evidence (TSL0003)

Thank you for inviting NABCP to the Select Committee Enquiry into Shop Theft that was held on 3^rd September 2024 at the House of Lords.

You kindly invited us to write to the Committee with our recommendations on how to address Shop Theft, specifically relating to the work of Business Crime Reduction Partnerships.

Business Crime Reduction Partnerships play a key role in our towns and cities to prevent business crime including shop theft, by information sharing to ideally prevent and deter crimes from happening, through real-time, live communication and information sharing.

BCRPs bridge the gap between the business community, Police, Local Authority and other partners, and are the only organisations who possess the entire overview of crime in their local areas, enabling the identification of offenders and crime trends at a much earlier stage.

The Committee asked what would make BCRPs more successful, and we would like to recommend these five key points:

1.            Recognition of the value of BCRPs

• We recommend that BCRPs should become an integral part of Policing and Local Authority Strategy, with the recommendation that Police Forces, Businesses and key partners are obliged to work with their local BCRPs to reduce crime.
  • BCRPs alleviate large volumes of crimes, with huge savings in resources and cost to Police and Local Authorities.
  • Locally, it is only the BCRP who maintains the overall view of what is happening in the local area, can resolve most low-level crime including some shop theft, encouraging information sharing between all parties, analysing data and identifying the most prolific offenders.
  • This enables the identification of offenders at a much earlier stage.
  • Encouraging businesses to report the most serious and repeat offenders to the Police, but deterring and preventing the smaller offences, freeing up Police time to deal with the highest harm.
  • BCRPs also contribute evidence and work to gaining Criminal Behaviour Orders, by ensuring crimes are reported, assisting with evidence gathering and submitting Business Impact Statements to the Courts.
  • BCRPs have a wide and complex remit and are key to preventing crime and disorder within the communities that they serve, by coordinating partnership work between local businesses, the Police, Local Authority and other key agencies.
  • BCRPs deliver many of the Government’s community safety priorities in the form of local project work, and many forms of training and awareness raising.
  • BCRPs play a pivotal role in our societies, and it is important for businesses look beyond the immediate return on investment and look to the wider community benefit that BCRPs bring.
  • Police, Businesses, Local Authorities and other key agencies should understand that they are stakeholders and partners in BCRPs, should be vocal and active to amalgamate the needs of the local area into the aims and objectives of the BCRP, bringing change where necessary.
  • BCRPs are not for profit organisations, and are accountable to the businesses and partners that they work alongside.
  • More formalised and wider knowledge of BCRPs to raise awareness of their effectiveness.

2.            Secure funding

• We recommend that membership to BCRPs should be included in the business rates that local businesses pay, so that everyone is part of the BCRP, not just those who choose to pay for membership; and/or through regular, consistent funding from the Police and Crime Commissioners.
  • BCRPs provide massive savings to Policing and alleviate the burden on resources, by addressing the large volume of low level crime.
  • Currently BCRPs are self-funded, mainly from the subscription fees from member businesses.
  • Many BCRPs struggle financially, can only afford a part time employee, whereas those in larger towns can employ several full time staff members as there are more businesses paying into the BCRP. Therefore there is a big difference between what can be offered from town to town.
  • It is important that BCRPs a should deliver a baseline of progress- monitored KPIs, and are provided with the funding and regulation to deliver this.
  • The work of a BCRP benefits all in the local area, whether directly or indirectly, and it is unjust that some businesses choose not to pay into BCRPs, yet they are still reaping the benefit of the BCRP operation in the local area.

3.            Governance and Regulation

• To develop a base line for BCRP aims and objectives, with set KPIs, accountable to the Police and Crime Commissioner through regular progress monitoring of outcomes and effectiveness, and assessment through the BCRP National Standards Accreditation.
  • The BCRP National Standards Accreditation is a three yearly assessment, with compliance checks on data protection, effectiveness, value for money, partnership working, participation levels and innovation.
  • This Accreditation is currently voluntary for BCRPs.
  • More governance and regulation would ensure that BCRPs are delivering a set standard, which will assure all parties working with the BCRP, and alleviate the disparity in remit from town to town.
  • Businesses and Police will know what to expect from working with a local BCRP, bringing consistency, standardisation, better outcomes, effectiveness and value for money.
  • Setting accountability and monitoring through the Police and Crime Commissioners would deliver a more consistent approach nationally.

4.            Data Sharing and Engagement

• Police and Businesses should be encouraged to share data including photographs of offenders with their local BCRPs. Businesses should encourage their staff to be active and engaged with the local BCRP, if there is one in the local area.
  • Being a business member of a BCRP is an active process, and businesses must engage and share data for the best results to be obtained within local communities.

5.            Enforcement

• Ideally, PCCs and Local Authorities should fund SIA licensed security personnel to patrol the public area in every town, where needed.
  • With the purpose of enforcing Public Space Protection Orders and low-level ASB such as littering, street drinking, aggressive begging, approaching and engaging with known shoplifters to deter any offences, and assist businesses in recovering stock if an offence occurs.
  • This will alleviate further burden on policing and act as a huge deterrent to all crime, including more serious offences such as drug offences and violent crime.
  • They should work with the BCRP, feed into local intelligence and partnership work, and contribute to wider safety priorities.

If every business were to pay a small increase in business rates, then all these recommendations would be achievable.

We are grateful for the opportunity to suggest these recommendations. Should you require more explanation of any of the points above, please contact us directly and we will be delighted to discuss further.

Safer Business Network CIC — Written evidence (TSL0002)

We would like to thank the committee for inviting Safer Business Network to provide evidence on the issues surrounding tackling shoplifting. We believe that significant and lasting changes can be made to address the problem across the sector.

We were asked to provide any recommendations that the committee could consider before completing their report, which I include below:

• Formally recognise the role of BCRPs as a trusted partner to Police

• Increased understanding and knowledge of BCRPs for Police Officers helps to build local relationships faster and more effectively.
  • Creating a ‘legacy policy’ so that good work based upon individual relationships is not wasted when Officers move on to other roles.
  • Trust and understanding from Police will ease blockages around effective information-sharing
  • Police will see BCRPs as a supportive partner that can enhance efficiency

• Standardise rules on the sharing of information between Police and BCRPs

• Setting clear and concise guidelines over what can be shared with BCRPs will offer reassurance to Police
  • Requests for information will not be reliant upon individual local relationships with Officers.
  • Data Compliance Teams within Police Forces will have uniform documentation
  • Information requested can be audited
  • Better data shared between Police and BCRPs can also help give a better picture of the issue

• Review the role BCRPs can play in tackling volume crime, taking the administrative burden away from stretched Police resources

• Gathering of basic evidence for ‘lower-level’ crime can be done by trusted partners – loss statements, impact statements etc.
  • Utilising BCRP Intel Teams to identify the most prolific and persistent offenders causing the most harm to businesses, improving the efficiency of police detection.
  • Better use of ASB legislation and community resolutions to address the prolific and persistent offenders

• Endorsement of BCRPs to support with sustainable funding

• We recognise that the state may not be able to fund this work, but endorsing BCRPs as a trusted part of the system will encourage the industry to support the partnerships financially.
  • The industry will support initiatives that work, and BCRPs can be highly effective when fully supported by the Police.
  • Funding is a constant issue for even the most successful BCRPs

Safer Business Network is committed to improving the issues faced by the business community and will always volunteer to support any review into best practices. If any further explanation of the points above is needed, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) — Written evidence (TSL0001)

I write to you on behalf of the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) and its members representing around 1400 businesses across the entire supply chain of the UK’s environmental horticulture industry.  The majority of these members are garden centre retailers and also includes large homeware and garden chains across the UK. The HTA also manage the National Garden Gift Card scheme which is enjoyed by many of the nation’s 30 million gardeners.  
 

Crime can be frequent and costly for retail businesses and unfortunately is prevalent and costly to the horticulture industry. The HTA estimates that in 2022, approximately £16million of member garden centres’ turnover was lost to theft.

22% of HTA member garden centres told us that customer theft was a major issue for their business (with a further 49% reporting it as a minor issue), meanwhile 40% of garden centres reported abuse towards staff as a minor issue too.

Garden centres are becoming increasingly targeted by criminals for theft due to their often rural and isolated locations. They are also a ‘place of destination’ retail experience for customers, meaning many home and garden goods of high value are on shelves.

An increase in police presence (stopping at garden centres on their rounds) would be a welcome deterrent and support mechanism for staff at garden centres. Many of our members express concern for the lack of or timeliness of a police response to a crime. Or lack of action even if providing evidence. Increased communication and details for business crime meetings within local regions would be welcome as would police forces identifying garden centres as hotspots for local retail theft.

The following are the most common items stolen at garden centres:

• Packet seeds
• Secateurs
• Gifts/jewellery
• Hand tools
• Others
• Candles
• Watering
• products/parts
• Bulbs

The majority (81%) of the garden centres surveyed have live CCTV cameras in place aiming to deter theft (and other crime). Other commonly used methods include signage, fake/dummy CCTV and the physical barrier of placing products behind locked cabinets. Security tags and sensor alarms on exit are used by approximately one in four

HTA members, though the types of products this method can be used on is likely to be limited.

Further research, information and support on retail crime is available in the following HTA document: https://hta.org.uk/media/en5p1id0/hta_crime-in-retail-22_7-vf.pdf

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