Neil Salt: It’s time to get tougher on shoplifting

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

Recent enquiries that I have made at many small and larger supermarkets across Clapham, Balham, and Streatham, evidence that shoplifting across virtually all of them has reached epidemic levels.

Whilst in virtually all of these instances the offences are reported to the police, more often than not, the police don’t have the capacity to follow up on anything other than the most dangerous of situations.

Campaigning in central Clapham Common one Saturday in early July alerted me and my colleagues to what had been a spate of shoplifting in one particular supermarket where it was reported that they had been targeted as many as 3 times per day over a three-week period.

This spurred me on to find out just how much of a problem shoplifting is in other neighbouring supermarket chains and their local equivalents. The fact that Perspex enclosures have recently been erected around the spirits and cigarette counters evidences that theft of those items in particular has become an all-too-frequent occurrence. In one store, the height of the Perspex enclosure installed will likely now need to be extended fully to the ceiling, as the current height wasn’t sufficient to prevent a shoplifter from jumping over the top of it.

In one supermarket, fresh steak is now tagged and in another, boxes of chocolates. Keeping wines in locked cabinets has become necessary in one, and in another spirits and cigarettes are even kept in shuttered cabinets until such a time that a customer requests a purchase – with all of the severe impact on that local supermarket’s monthly bottom line.

The security guard in one local supermarket reported being head-butted on one occasion and spat on during another incident whilst trying to apprehend a shoplifter.

There are too many examples of shoplifting being undertaken to order and on multiple occasions each day. Examples of this relate most obviously to fresh meat and fish produce, together with wines and spirits, but more surprisingly also to more expensive washing products. Not only are local police seeking to apprehend the prolific shoplifters, but also to track down and prosecute any local convenience stores and off-licences that may be identified as taking the stolen goods off the hands of the shoplifters for cash.

When a security guard seized alcohol from the hands of one shoplifter attempting to leave that store without paying, the shoplifter admitted that his intention was to sell it on to a local off-licence. Some store managers have confirmed their belief that onward sales for cash to local convenience stores are happening with fresh meat and fish products.

There are numerous examples of shoplifters who regularly target those smaller local supermarkets that employ only one security guard waiting until such time as that security guard is on a break before seizing their moment to run in to the store and shoplift.

What to do about a situation that has clearly now reached epidemic levels?

1. Security guards are doing all that they are able to do under difficult circumstances. In the larger supermarkets where they have a screen-bank in front of them showing live footage throughout the store, the A.S.C.O.N.E process has to be followed in order to enable the valid apprehending of a suspected shoplifter at the exit gate of the store by means of a “citizen’s arrest”. If there is more than one security guard on duty at that store then there is a far greater chance of a successful apprehension ensuing. At that point, however, the bureaucracy starts to kick in, with a suspected shoplifter only being allowed to be held back by the store for a reasonable period of time. If the police are to take further action then the security guard concerned will then likely be questioned by police on a separate occasion as part of the reporting system. An example cited in one supermarket was of such an interview taking up to three hours – and with the potential requirement for the security guard to attend a court hearing taking them away from their day-to-day work for a minimum of an additional half a day. As long as there is in-store video footage available to the police of the shoplifting as it occurred surely there is a way of shortening the reporting process undertaken by the police in the lead up to a court appearance of the suspected shoplifter?
2. All shoplifters are only too aware that all supermarkets instruct their members of staff not to intervene for their own safety. In one recent instance this has led to members of the public – in this case people sitting outside a local pub immediately opposite the small local supermarket – refusing to stand by and see persistent shoplifting continue. Upon hearing raised voices by store workers in the supermarket, some from outside the pub ran to their aid in the supermarket and, as a direct consequence of the influence of yet further raised voices, this led to the shoplifters fleeing the store having dropped the stolen goods. The intervention of members of the general public, however, can’t be seen as a suitable way forward as a means of reducing the current shoplifting epidemic. Whilst fully respecting that the safety of all supermarkets’ employees is of paramount importance an argument could perhaps be made that, in those instances where the store employs one or more security guard, other store employees should not be in fear of losing their jobs if they were to choose to assist the security guard(s) in helping to restrain a shoplifter from leaving that store’s premises.
3. Undercover police are already deployed, resources allowing, on occasions outside supermarkets that are experiencing persistent shoplifting. Let us hope that information sharing by those supermarkets with the local police extends to informing them daily – in those instances where they employ just the one full-time security guard – as to the exact time when their security guard will be on their lunchtime break.
4. Zero tolerance is required from the police of any local convenience stores and local off-licences that can be proven to be purchasers for cash of such “stolen to order” goods.

Reducing the current epidemic of shoplifting across this area of south London – and no doubt across London as a whole – clearly won’t be easy to resolve. Small steps such as the 4 suggested above may just start to make life that bit more uncomfortable for repeat shoplifters and those independent retailers purchasing their stolen goods for cash for onward sale.

The Labour Government’s upcoming Crime & Policing Bill would have us believe that section 176 of the Coalition Government’s Anti-social Behaviour, Crime & Policing Act 2014 brought about “the perceived immunity granted to shop theft of £200 or less” and hence their wish to repeal that part of the legislation.

In fact what that legislation does, by designating the theft of goods of under £200 as a “summary” offence, is to speed up the process previously in place by allowing for such offences to come before a Magistrates’ Court, if the defendant is likely to plead guilty, rather than to need to go before the Crown Court. Magistrates have a range of sentencing powers up to a maximum of 6 months in prison. Defendants involved in cases involving multiple offences where the total of the stolen goods adds up to more than £200 are already being dealt with by the Crown Court and with the enhanced sentencing then available of up to seven years’ custody.

It’s time now for our Party to shine a light on this current shoplifting epidemic and to push for various measures to be put in place, such as the four mentioned above and others, so as to ensure that far more shoplifting offenders – and any independent retailers purchasing those stolen goods for cash for onward sale – are actually brought to book and speedily under perfectly reasonable existing legislation.

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