From steak to spirits, shoplifters are winning – London’s stores need back-up

It was good to see the Daily Express lead its front page at the start of this month with the launch of a campaign demanding action “to halt the shoplifting crisis that is costing stores more than £2.2bn a year”.

As I referenced in an article published in Conservative Home on Tuesday 26th August, shoplifting in London has sadly now reached epidemic levels, as conversations that I have now held with managers and security guards at 14 supermarkets and their local store equivalents across Clapham, Balham, Streatham and Herne Hill over recent weeks would evidence.

In many supermarkets, fresh steak and fresh fish is now tagged and in one, boxes of chocolates. In a local supermarket on one of our local high streets enduring regular theft of fresh steak, the meat is now protected within individual sealed perspex boxes, which are removed once you go through check out.

The only problem with this is that the steaks are still being stolen within the perspex boxes and are subsequently broken open. The fact that the security perspex boxes cost more than the actual products within them makes for more than a double whammy for this supermarket chain each time that steak continues to be stolen.

Wines are often either kept in locked cabinets or are tagged. In several, spirits are now kept in permanently shuttered cabinets until such time as customers request a purchase.

Those stores with either locked wine cabinets or permanently shuttered cabinets unsurprisingly confirm a significant reduction in sales – up to 50% in the case of one supermarket chain’s store. In many local stores, perspex enclosures have now been erected around the counters selling spirits.

One security guard has been head butted, and on another occasion spat upon, whilst trying to apprehend shoplifters.

Very many store managers and security guards cite examples of shoplifting being undertaken to order and all too frequently by local convenience stores and off licences.

When one security guard seized alcohol from the hands of one shoplifter attempting to leave his store without paying, the shoplifter admitted that his intention was to sell it on to a local off licence for cash.

Some store managers have confirmed their belief that onward sales for cash to local convenience stores are happening and not just with fresh meat and fresh fish products, but also with the more expensive washing products. Regular bare shelves in local supermarkets where these goods would normally be displayed evidence this.

What to do about this situation?

1. All shoplifting offences logged by the local supermarkets or by their security companies, at those stores employing a security guard presence, need to be reported to the police, so that the actual number of shoplifting offences is more accurately recorded than may be the case currently.

2. The police need to bring to book more of the shoplifters under existing legislation.

3. The police need to go after the offending local convenience stores and off licences in a far more proactive way than currently.

4. The process that security guards go through with police, once having reported a shoplifting offence, needs shortening in those cases where video footage evidencing the shoplifting is provided, so as to avoid the amount of time taken up by the security guards attending police meetings and subsequently attending court.

5. Security guards to be encouraged by their employers to be proactive in seeking to stop shoplifters leaving their stores once all parts of their A.S.C.O.N.E and S.A.F.E.R procedures will have been followed, with the additional benefit of store video footage, and having due regard for their own safety.

With the vast majority of the national chains of supermarkets sub-contracting recruitment and management of their security guards to private companies such as TSS and Mitie, instructions received by these security guards would seem to be for them not to intervene physically other than potentially to try to wrest the stolen goods from the shoplifters immediately in front of the store’s entrance/exit area.

Store security guards are mindful that a shoplifter has to be very close to the store’s exit before they are able to take any action, as the police will require clear video footage that the shoplifter is definitively evading payment. Once the shoplifter has left the shop premises, however, the security guard’s right to apprehend a shoplifter as a store employee ceases.

6. In some local store equivalents of the national chain of supermarkets that have experienced a huge amount of ongoing shoplifting - 35 cases per week is not uncommon is some - plain clothes security guards have on occasions been put in place. This initiative has often served to be more effective, as it provides an element of surprise to a shoplifter.

7. Given that all supermarket chains currently seem to forbid all members of staff, with the exception of their security guards, from apprehending shoplifters – and clearly all regular shoplifters know that only too well – it would be good to see those supermarkets which employ one or more security guards at each set of premises to allow those of their shop workers willing to go to the aid of their security guard colleague(s) in intervening with shoplifters to be allowed to do so without fear of losing their jobs. Whilst non-intervention would be prudent where no security guard is in place, it surely should no longer be a sackable offence for a store worker to assist their security guard in apprehending a shoplifter, where such additional support would be valuable.

Many conversations held over recent weeks would evidence that many store employees are somewhat frustrated by the lack of ability to take action themselves, although none would wish to put themselves in danger.

In one local supermarket there was a recent example of members of the public running in to the store from a pub across the road when raised voices from store workers evidenced to them that a major shoplifting incident was underway. It shouldn’t take members of the public to need to intervene on behalf of store workers, who are in fear of losing their jobs if they take any direct action themselves.

Prolific shoplifters are only too aware as to the restricted actions made available to most supermarket security guards and they are consequently getting away with shoplifting time after time. The boot is currently on the wrong foot and it’s high time that this changed, without endangering the lives of any security guards, supermarket managers or other store workers.

Sir Sadiq Khan – now not ruling out standing for the London Mayoralty for a fourth time in 2027 after an appearance on LBC on Friday morning – focused the Home Office’s “Safer Streets” summer policing blitz initiative for London, which ends on Tuesday 30th September, on tackling crime with an increased police presence in the capital’s 20 most blighted town centres, including Brixton, Croydon and Lewisham High Street.

I would suggest to The Mayor that, as from Wednesday 1st October, there isn’t an area across London that isn’t currently requiring its own blitz on shoplifting. Ever greater pro-active use of plain clothed police in apprehending prolific shoplifters at those supermarkets enduring the greatest number of shoplifting offences, alongside a continuing focus on investigation of local convenience store and off licence owners who may be purchasers of such stolen goods for cash, needs to happen urgently.

In the year to May 2025, Met Police figures showed 102,083 shoplifting offences, an annual increase of 41.9%. Unless the Mayor and Met Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, together take further “blitz” action on shoplifting across the whole of London this autumn and beyond – in combination with the continuing assistance of supermarket security guards intervening proactively, alongside potential additional store workers’ assistance without endangering their lives - then those numbers by May 2026 will likely have escalated significantly further, if all that I have heard about over the past two months across many of south London’s supermarkets continues.

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Neil Salt is the Constituency Officer for Streatham and Croydon North, Lambeth & Southwark Conservative Federation and a Conservative candidate for Clapham Town ward in Lambeth local elections, May 2026

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