Crime and victims
Business and retail crime
Businesses are at the heart of our local communities, employing close to three million staff across the country. The retail industry forms an important part of business, with the retail sector making around £287bn worth of sales in 2008.
What is business crime?
Business crime includes ‘all crime and disorder committed by or against businesses.’ This can be targeted against a single person working in business, against a single business, or may be part of a wider pattern of crime which adversely impacts a number of businesses in the same sector, or in the same geographical area.
Some of the crimes that could affect businesses include:
- commercial robbery
- fraud and forgery
- shop theft
- theft by employees
- theft of and from vehicles
- making off without payment (for example from petrol forecourts)
It could also include violent crimes such as assault, harassment or robbery, as well as anti-social behaviour and criminal damage.
What we’re doing to stop business crime
Retail Crime Action Plan 2009
We’re working in partnership with business to stop retail crime. On 6 August 2009, we published a retail crime action plan, which was jointly agreed with the national retail crime steering group.
The action plan outlines how we will go further to make sure retailers are secure from crime against businesses. It shows activity already undertaken by the steering group, as well as looking at new areas where we can help.
Small retailers capital grants fund
On 6 August, Alan Campbell, the Home Office Minister responsible for crime reduction, announced a new £5m small retailers’ capital grant fund. From 17 August, small retailers and other groups responsible for tackling crime against retailers will be able to apply for grants funding in 50 specified areas. More details are available on the grants administrators website (new window).
How safe is your business?
We’ve put together an online questionnaire to help you assess how secure your business is. The tool will provide targeted information for you to improve your security and reduce the chance of your business being victimised.
Take our questionnaire (it should take about 15 minutes).
The scale of crime against business
Although the British Crime Survey shows that overall crime rates for personal and household crime have come down by 36% since 1997, police figures for England and Wales 2008-09 indicate that the total number of shoplifting offences recorded by the police was 320,846 - an increase of 10% from 2007-08.
During the same period robbery of business property also increased by 2%.
Crimes against business such as shop-lifting are thought to be under-reported and we are working with trade associations to obtain a more detailed picture by making use of alternative sources of information. This will include a new commercial victimisation survey, with results due in 2010.
Designing out crime
The design against crime initiative (new window) encourages businesses to consider the ‘crime resistance’ of their designs and systems before launching them. The Design Council (new window) is also planning to launch a new competition in September 2009 to find ideas to tackle retail crime.
We have also worked with major businesses to stop the trade of stolen goods by putting small identity chips into products such as televisions, computers and cameras. This £5.5m initiative helps police to identify and recover stolen goods.
Find out more
For more crime prevention advice, visit the Metropolitan Police Service (new window) or CRIMEMATTERS (new window), a non-profit organisation helping businesses to reduce crime by supplying them with advice and support.
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