On 25 February the federal government’s Crime and Policing Invoice had its first studying within the Home of Commons. For the retail trade, the laws will introduce a brand new offence of assaulting a retail employee to “give employees in retailers up and down the nation the safety they want”. It’ll additionally scrap the £200 threshold for shoplifting.
It comes a month after new knowledge from the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) Annual Crime Survey discovered that UK retail crime is at its highest stage on file.
It discovered that violence and abuse of retail employees climbed to greater than 2,000 incidents per day in 2023/24, up from 1,300 the yr earlier than. The newest determine is greater than 3 times what it was in 2020, when there have been 455 incidents a day.
The BRC research – which covers the interval from 1 September 2023 to 31 August 2024 – additionally discovered that losses from buyer theft reached a file £2.2bn in the course of the interval, regardless of retailers spending £1.8bn on prevention.
In gentle of this, Drapers is launching a confidential and nameless survey to learn the way these working within the vogue retail sector are being impacted by in-store crime, and what help the sector must deal with it.
By listening to from these engaged on the frontline of vogue retail, Drapers hopes to drive the adjustments wanted to assist resolve the disaster. The findings shall be used to tell an investigation into the influence of shoplifting and crime on the companies and other people working within the vogue retail sector.
