ACS (the Association of Convenience Stores) has welcomed the second reading of the Crime and Policing Bill, held yesterday in parliament (10th March).
In the debate, Yvette Cooper, Secretary of State for the Home Department, outlined plans within the bill to introduce a standalone offence for assaulting a shopworker, introduce Respect Orders, scrap the £200 threshold for shop theft offences, and to place £200 million for the next financial year on recruiting 13,000 more neighbourhood police and police community support officers to tackle crimes against the community.
Additionally, the Secretary of State highlighted the unique challenges faced in crimes against rural communities which she stated are often driven by organised gangs. The Bill introduces measures to prevent prolific offenders from entering places such as town centres, as well as introducing new interventions to help addicts into treatment and end the cycle of reoffending.
The ACS 2025 Crime Report was also launched yesterday, revealing the extent of crime committed against the convenience sector and its retailers, estimating a record-breaking 6.2million incidents of shop theft.
Key figures from this year’s report include:
- Crime cost retailers an estimated £316m over the last year
- Retailers have spent over £265m on crime prevention and detection measures in their store over the last year
- Taken together, the cost of crime and investment in crime prevention amount to a 10p crime tax on every transaction in a convenience store
- There were over 59,000 estimated incidents of violence in the convenience sector over the last year, and 1.2million incidents of verbal abuse
- 59% of retailers believe that incidents involving organised crime have increased over the last year
We will be holding a session on retail crime at our Safe & Responsible Retailing Conference, taking place tomorrow on the 12th March, where we will be going through our 2025 Crime Report, as well as what works in tackling retail crime on the shop floor.
Chris, James and Ed from ACS were joined by Taranjit Dhillon from Nisa and independent retailer Ben Salvaratnam to discuss the findings of the Crime Report and measures in store that are effective at reducing crime, as part of an episode of the Local Shop Podcast. The full episode is available below.
