Shoplifters costing retailers £400k every day

SHOPLIFTERS cost retailers almost £400,000 in stolen goods every day, according to new figures that reveal the rising financial impact of the menace.

The year-on-year cost of shoplifting to high street stores across the UK has spiralled from 99 million to 137m, as items worth a total of 375,342 are taken from the shelves every day on average.

But the survey carried out by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) also showed that the number of recorded incidents fell 11 per cent compared with the previous year.

Clothes stores are shoplifters most common targets, with 29.3 per cent of all thefts, followed by convenience stores and news-agents and supermarkets, with 27.3 per cent and 16.7 per cent respectively.

The BRC said that the rise in the cost had been pushed up by organised and systematic thefts by gangs, and that the average pricetag of goods stolen in each incident has increased from 45 to 70, as low-value opportunist thefts had dropped off.

A spokesman for the BRC said: "I think a raft of the more opportunist shoplifting offences have disappeared or significantly reduced thanks to the extra investment shops have being putting into security measures, and that's left a bigger proportion of the more sophisticated, systematic higher-value offences, which are frequently the ones used to fund drug habits.

"The drop-off in opportunistic thefts is also probably in part due to the improvement in the economy over the past 12 months."

Stores spent 210 million - 575,342 a day - protecting their staff, stock and premises, adding more targeted tagging of high-value goods, increased CCTV camera usage, more security staff and greater use of computer systems to spot suspicious patterns of transactions through tills and credit card fraud.

Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC, called on the government, police and courts to do more to support businesses despite the potential impact of budget cuts on public services.

"It's encouraging to see this having a positive impact on the number of shoplifting offences, but the cost to retailers still went up," he said.

"Retailers' extra investment in stopping crime has deterred a lot of opportunist thefts, leaving a higher proportion of determined, organised thieves who take a greater value of goods each time they steal."

The figures were based on a survey of 54 retailers who employ more than 1.3 million staff and represent almost half of Britain's retail turnover.

A spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses Scotland said that the impact of shoplifting could have significantly greater impact on its members compared with the BRC's.

"It is a significant problem for our members, particularly if you are in a low-volume but high- margin goods, which are more attractive to criminals.

"If you lose a couple, that's a high percentage of your weekly turnover. The other knock-on effect is that it pushes your insurance premiums up - we all suffer. "A lot of our members can't push their prices up because they're competing with big out-of-town shopping centres, so they really have to cut profit margins to the bone."

Both organisations agreed, however, that there was a perceived lack of willingness by police and courts to take the offence seriously, which has led to an under-reporting. The BRC said that it believed only 12 per cent of shoplifting incidents were reported.