Bira has cautiously welcomed a fall in recorded shoplifting offences, while warning that official figures likely understate the true scale of retail crime facing independent businesses.
New data from the Office for National Statistics shows shoplifting offences fell by 4 per cent to 507,086 in the year ending March 2026, down from 530,324 the previous year. The figures also show robbery of personal property fell by 9 per cent to 57,693 offences, although overall robbery rose by 10 per cent to 87,362 offences, largely due to changes in how robbery of business property is recorded by police forces.
Andrew Goodacre, CEO of Bira, said: “We welcome the reported reduction in retail crime, and we are pleased that more people are being charged. We remain concerned that the level of retail crime remains extraordinarily high and now is not the time to relax and lose momentum. We are also concerned that the ONS stats may not reflect the true level of crime. In our own recent survey, a high percentage of members told us they do not report incidents, due to a historic lack of support.”
Bira’s own retail crime survey, published in June 2026, found that almost 77 per cent of respondents had experienced theft in the past 12 months, up from 64 per cent in Bira’s previous survey, with nearly 90 per cent of those saying theft had worsened compared with the year before. More than three quarters of respondents said thieves were becoming more brazen, and over 75 per cent pointed to repeat offenders as responsible for the theft they experienced. More than 45 per cent of those who experienced theft did not report it to the police at all, and of those who did, police attended in 67 per cent of cases but just 35 per cent of those led to a prosecution.
The British Independent Retailers Association (Bira), which works with over 6,000 independent retailers across the UK, has long campaigned for stronger action on retail crime, including better support for retailers to report incidents and tougher consequences for offenders.
Mr Goodacre added that continued pressure on the issue remained essential to protecting shop workers and independent businesses on the high street.
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