Police-recorded shoplifting offences in England and Wales hit new 20-year high
Major retailers have raised concerns about the increased cost of thefts.
The number of shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales has risen to a new 20-year high.
A total of 469,788 offences were logged by forces in the year to June 2024, up 29% on the 365,173 recorded in the previous 12 months.
The figure is the highest since current records began in the year to March 2003, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS said the police figures showed “shoplifting remains at record levels” while policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said the data demonstrated the “scale of the challenge we have inherited in our mission to make streets safer.”
Shoplifting levels had already reached a 20-year high earlier this year, with the latest figures showing the number of offences recorded has now risen even higher.
The figures also show the number of offences involving theft from a person stood at 139,368 in the 12 months to June, up 20% from 116,312 a year earlier.
The data published on Thursday comes in the wake of major retailers raising concerns about the increased cost of theft and as the Government vowed to tackle low-level shoplifting and make assaulting a shop worker a specific criminal offence.
The move to create a separate offence follows a long-running campaign from business owners and Conservative backbencher Matt Vickers amid rising violence against retail workers.
Retailers said they hope the measures set out in the King’s Speech to Parliament earlier this year after Labour won the election will make it easier for police to investigate and prosecute criminals.
Dame Sharon White, chairwoman of the John Lewis Partnership which also owns Waitrose, last year declared shoplifting was an “epidemic” and said incidents were not always investigated by police.
Iceland executive chairman Richard Walker previously said his company was spending “more than ever” on security, yet “serious incidents have never been higher”.
Earlier this year Association of Convenience Stores chief executive James Lowman said it was “no surprise” that shoplifting levels continue to rise and the official data represents “just a fraction of the levels of theft that are happening in convenience stores and other retail outlets on a daily basis”, adding that thieves were stealing “without fear of apprehension”.
Dame Diana added: “Too many town centres have been decimated by record levels of shoplifting, and communities have been left shaken by rising levels of knife crime, snatch theft and robbery. This cannot continue.
“This Government will restore neighbourhood policing across the country, put thousands more dedicated officers out on our streets and scrap the £200 shoplifting threshold, bringing an end to the effective impunity for thieves who steal low value goods.”
According to the ONS figures, the number of robberies recorded rose by 6% to 81,931 in the year to June, up from 77,106 in the previous 12 months – although this remains below levels seen before the coronavirus pandemic, with 90,199 offences in the year to March 2020.
The number of knife crime offences recorded by police forces in England and Wales in the 2023/24 period stood at 50,973, up 4% from 49,187 in 2022/23, but still below pre-pandemic levels of 51,982 offences in 2019/20.
There was a “notable increase” in the number of robberies involving a knife or sharp instrument, with 21,759 recorded by forces in 2023/24, up 11% from 19,607 in the previous 12 months, although this is below the 22,727 in 2019/20.
Offences involving possession of an article with a blade or point fell to 27,553, down 4% from 28,582 in the previous 12 months.
This follows “substantial increases in recent years, which may have been influenced by targeted police action to tackle knife crime”, the ONS said.
But the figures on knife crime do not include offences recorded by Greater Manchester Police due to problems recording data.
Police recorded 6.7 million crimes in the year to June, similar to the previous 12 months, the ONS said.
Separate Home Office figures show the proportion of investigations into crimes recorded by police in the latest period which were closed with no suspect identified stood at 40.2%, up from 39.5% in the previous year.
The proportion of suspects being taken to court stood at 6.7%. In rape cases this was 2.7%. These are both slight increases on the previous period (5.7% and 2.2% respectively) but still among the lowest levels recorded.
