Shoplifting up 25% in the past year

Shoplifting offences recorded by police forces in England and Wales have risen by a quarter in the past year, according to official figures.

The data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Thursday comes after warnings from major retailers about the rising cost of theft from their stores.

The Co-op said its food business lost £33m in the first six months of 2023.

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Some 365,164 shoplifting offences were recorded by police in the year to June – up 25% on the previous 12 months.

The figure is 2% above the 359,236 offences in the pre-pandemic year of 2019/20, but not as high as the 375,350 offences in 2018/19.

ONS data shows total police-recorded theft rose by 10% in the year to June 2023, which is still below pre-pandemic levels.

The government has come under increasing pressure to tackle the rise in shoplifting, which has been blamed on the cost of living crisis and organised crime.

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Britain’s biggest force, the Metropolitan Police, have announced a rollout of facial recognition technology to target London’s most prolific offenders.

Some 6.7 million crimes were reported to forces in England and Wales in the year to June, compared with 6.5 million in the previous year and 6.1 million in 2019/20.

The ONS said this likely reflected factors such as better recording of offences by the police, more victims reporting crime and new types of offences, but there were also “genuine increases in some types of crime”.

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The latest increase has been mainly driven by the rise in shoplifting and a jump in fraud offences against businesses – more of which is being reported due to action by industry bodies, the ONS added.

Homicides fell 10% to 602, compared with 667 the previous year, according to the data, but robbery offences were up by 11% to 77,337 compared with the previous year, remaining 14% lower than before the pandemic.

Knife offences (excluding Devon and Cornwall) rose 3% to 50,833, but were 7% lower than the year to March 2020 – and the Met, Greater Manchester Police and West Midlands Police were the three forces with the highest levels of knife crime.

While Greater Manchester saw a drop of 16% and the West Midlands 5%, the Met saw a rise of 21%, although still below pre-pandemic levels.

Knife possession offences were also up across England and Wales, rising by 10% to 28,211 in the year to June, although the ONS said the increase could be due to police crackdowns.

Firearms offences (excluding Devon and Cornwall) rose by 13%, to a similar level before the pandemic, with the biggest rise for imitation firearms, which went up 26% to 2,566 from 2,031 offences.

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The figures were released alongside the findings of the annual crime survey for England in Wales, where members of the public are interviewed separately about their experiences.

In contrast, it suggests that people aged 16 and over experienced 8.4 million offences, down 10% on 9.4 million in the previous 12 months and a fall of 18% from 10.2 million in a survey for the year ending March 2020, in the year ending June 2023.

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