Recently published retail crime surveys from the Home Office, USDAW and ACS were not light reading. Retail crime is up across the board with abuse and violence towards workers at record highs. In 2020, the trigger was most often aggressive resistance to Covid protection measures, but even as such measures were relaxed, abuse remained high. “Faced with such appallingly high levels of violence and abuse, and with shopworkers’ almost complete lock of confidence in the ability of the system to […]
Retail workers are calling for greater protection in the workplace, with almost one in five (18%) specifically requesting that they want more security guards present on the premises. This is unsurprising given the extreme hostility directed towards retail workers over the past year, as revealed by two recently released retail crime surveys covering 2021: one from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) and another from the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS). Combined with the Home Office’s Commercial […]
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have extended the busy winter shopping period further back into the year, placing more demand than ever on warehouses and distribution centres. Not only has online shopping massively increased the scale of logistics and need for secure warehousing, it has also made it far easier for criminals to sell stolen goods. How is a customer on eBay, for example, supposed to be able to identify items that were stolen? And in the run up to […]
Retail crime has increased by 40% across all categories. Likewise, spending on retail crime prevention has reached an all time high, hitting £1 billion in 2019 – four times 2016’s total. Whether you run a small boutique shop or manage a retail site boasting dozens of stores, you need to make sure that you are spending wisely on security. Here is my advice for how to best protect your retail business from theft, abusive customers and vandalism. Retail CCTV CCTV is […]
The British Retail Consortium’s 2019 annual Retail Crime Survey found very concerning trends, with crime on the rise across all categories, from customer and employee theft to staff abuse and cyber attacks. Retail crime statistics for 2019 Counting direct costs alone, crime cost the retail industry an estimated £900 million per year, up 28% from 2018. This doesn’t include indirect costs such as reduced efficiency, wasted employee time and the emotional and physical consequences of abuse. As a result, spending […]
