Retailers pay high price for shop-lifting

The government is ignoring the £1.7 billion annual cost of retail crime faced by the nation’s shopkeepers, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) has claimed.

Figures released today in the BRC’s tenth Annual Crime Survey indicate that if the cost of crime prevention measures were added to that mark, the total would be £2.2 billion for last year. But, whilst losses from crime fell slightly in 2002, there was a "huge bedrock of underlying crime" that retailers have been unable to force down – despite spending more than £3.2 billion on crime prevention over the last five years, the BRC claims.

Bill Moyes, Director General of the consortium, said: “Retail crime losses are broadly static thanks to the efforts of retailers, but the government doesn’t appear to care that it cost the industry and therefore our customers £2.2 billion in 2002.

“In 2002, only £3 million was spent on retail crime reduction by the Home Office’s Crime Reduction Directors. Until the reshuffle, we had not had a minister looking over this area for more than 80 days. When the government defines the priorities for the police, retail doesn’t even rate a mention," he claimed.

The survey also claims that eight million offences of customer theft occur each year, but that only 306,000 were recorded by police.

It has been estimated that £1.2 billion per year of retail crime losses go to support drug abuse.

The BRC says that until the issue is taken seriously, "everyone is losing out".

Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin, said that the figures painted "an appalling picture" of the daily problems faced by retailers.

"The government has virtually ignored retail crime, partly because retail crime is astonishingly not included in the British Crime Survey figures," he said.

"It is time to become serious about retail crime. Retail establishments need to be better designed. At the same time we need to get police back on to the streets to protect retail premises from vandalism and burglary."

(GMcG)