The number of shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales has passed half a million for the first time, figures show.
An astonishing 516,971 offences were logged by forces last year, up 20 per cent from 429,873 in 2023.
The figure is the highest since current police records began 22 year ago in 2003, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Shoplifting offences have been at record levels for the past two years and have seen a ‘sharp rise’ since the Covid-19 pandemic, the ONS said.
The real figures are likely to be far higher given many shopkeepers feel it is pointless to report offences to police, retail leaders said.
Association of Convenience Stores chief executive, James Lowman, said: ‘The increase in shop theft shown by these figures reflects what our members are seeing every day in their stores.
‘The volume of theft is still massively under-reported though: our own member survey revealed 6.2million thefts recorded by convenience stores alone.
‘It is encouraging that more theft is being reported, even if it is still only the tip of the iceberg. Unless theft is reported, we cannot identify the repeat offenders who are responsible for so much of this crime.’
Some people accused of raiding a fridge in a branch of Tesco
Shoplifting across the country is costing an estimated £4.2billion. Pictured is a thief in action
Four fifths of retailers have reported being robbed in the past year, a survey from the British Independent Retailers Association (Bira) found.
Bira chief executive, Andrew Goodacre, said the ONS figures represented a ‘deeply troubling milestone’ that confirmed what the organisation’s members had been saying for months.
‘The impact on independent retailers is awful,’ he added.
‘The stock they are losing represents a loss of their savings, as well as a loss of profits. As one retailer said to us recently: “It is like being burgled every week, and nobody should have to put up with that”.’
He ’cautiously’ welcomed the announcement of the Crime and Policing Bill in February but said there must be urgent and coordinated action across all police forces to tackle the issue.
‘Independent retailers cannot wait years for solutions to a crisis that is happening right now,’ he added.
Retail crime costs store owners more than £2.2bn a year, British Retail Consortium director Tom Ironside said.
Cleveland and Nottinghamshire appeared to record the most offences relative to population, with 14.3 and 13.1 per 1,000 people respectively.
London was also a hotspot, with almost ten offences recorded in the year to December 2024 per 1,000 people.
Among the safest places to own a shop are Cumbria, with 4.8 offences per 1,000 people, and Dyfed-Powys in Wales, with 4.1.
Meanwhile 152,416 theft from the person offences were recorded last year, up 22 per cent from 125,379 in 2023 and the highest number since current data began in 2003.
A total of 1.80 million theft offences were recorded, up 1 per cent on 2023.
The increase was driven by the rise in shoplifting and theft from the person, the ONS said.
Responding to the data, policing minister Dame Diana Johnson pledged to turn the tide on soaring shoplifting rates by adding more neighbourhood police officers.
She said: ‘This Labour Government will not tolerate the criminality blighting our communities.
‘That’s why we’re putting almost 3,000 more bobbies on the beat in neighbourhood roles this year, and under our leadership, these crimes will receive the attention they deserve.
‘We are already starting to reverse the Tories’ decade of decline on charge rates.’
She added: ‘Today’s figures are yet more evidence of the damage done by destroying neighbourhood policing as the Tories did over 14 years.’
Of the 494,086 police-recorded shoplifting offences in England and Wales in 2024 that have so far been assigned an outcome, 19 per cent (93,156) resulted in a charge or summons, up from 17 per cent in 2023, while 57% (281,107) of investigations were completed with no suspect identified, unchanged on the previous year, PA news agency analysis of Home Office figures shows.
Crooks pile all their stolen goods into bags, often as helpless store staff and security watch on
Thieves are brazenly raiding shops, stealing meats, booze and sweets from the shelves
A masked thief – dressed all in black – loading stolen vapes in to a large bag in a Tesco store
Elsewhere in the ONS data, 54,587 knife crime offences were recorded by police in England and Wales in 2024, up 2 per cent from 53,413 in 2023 but 1 per cent below the pre-pandemic figure of 55,170 in the year to March 2020.
The number of offences involving possession of an article with a blade or point was 28,150, up 1 per cent from 27,892 and higher than the pre-pandemic figure of 23,264 in 2019/20.
There were 216 knife-enabled homicides, down 16 per cent from 258 in 2023.
Billy Gazard of the ONS said: ‘While police-recorded offences involving knives and sharp instruments have increased, there has been a marked decrease in firearms offences.
‘However, shoplifting offences continue to rise, reaching half a million offences in the year ending December 2024, the highest on record.’
The data showed the number of homicides recorded by police in England and Wales fell to its lowest level in a decade.
Some 535 offences were recorded in 2024, down 5 per cent from 563 in 2023 and the lowest figure since 533 in the 12 months to March 2014.
Overall, police recorded 6.64 million crimes in England and Wales in 2024, down by 1 per cent from 6.68 million in 2023.
The total is up from 4.03 million a decade earlier in 2013/14, but this is likely to reflect ‘changes in police activity and recording practices’ as well as genuine changes in trends in crimes reported to and recorded by forces, and ‘should not be used to say that overall crime has increased’, the ONS said.
Figures from the separate ONS crime survey for England and Wales suggest people aged 16 and over experienced 9.61 million incidents of crime in 2024, up from 8.40 million in 2023.
The rise is mainly due to a 33 per cent increase in fraud, which accounted for 4.10 million incidents in the survey, and a 13 per cent increase in theft, to 2.93 million.
Metropolitan Police detectives recently tagged 5,000 commonly stolen items such as alcohol and chocolate with SelectaDNA, a fluid only visible under ultraviolet (UV) light that is almost impossible to remove
Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson has pledged to put an extra 3,000 neighbourhood officers on the beat
The overall total of 9.61 million is lower than the 11.22 million for 2016/17, when fraud and computer misuse were first included in the figures.
Mr Gazard added: ‘The increase in crime recorded by the survey in the recent period has been driven by fraud and theft.
‘Notably there has been a significant increase in theft from the person, with mobile phones the most common item stolen.’
Experiences of crimes, as measured by the ONS survey, have been on a broad downwards trend since the mid-1990s.
The survey covers a range of personal and household victim-based crime, including theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse and violence with or without injury, but does not include sexual offences, stalking, harassment and domestic abuse, which are presented separately.
