Majority of UK consumers think it’s easy to steal from retailers as crime stats soar

YouGov surveyed over 18,000 respondents from 17 countries across a range of questions related to retail crime. The findings go some way to explaining why the issue of shoplifting and violence against retail staff continues to be such a massive problem in the UK.

When asked how easy or difficult respondents think it would be to steal items worth less than $50 (£36), 81% of the over 2,000 UK respondents said it would be very or fairly easy to shoplift from a grocery store.

That figure was 19 percentage points higher than the weighted average of all global respondents.

When asked the same question about stealing from a clothing store, 71% of UK respondents thought it would be very or fairly easy, compared to 55% of all international respondents.

The number of UK consumers who felt it would be very or fairly easy to steal from a consumer electronics store was 41%, which was below the 55% global average of respondents.

The data comes as the latest Office for National Statistics revealed this week that the number of reported incidents of shoplifting between September 2024 and September 2025 increased by 5 per cent to 519,381, compared with the previous year’s 492,660 offences, which was an increase of 20 per cent.

According to the most recent BRC crime report, annual losses as a result of customer theft totalled a record £2.2bn and retailers spent £1.8bn – also a record – on crime prevention.

While the year-on-year increase has slowed, the figures still paint a worrying picture that retail crime continues to increase in the UK.

Last week, Retail Week revealed that supermarket giant Tesco had launched a new crime reporting platform across 40 of its stores in a bid to curb incidents of shoplifting and violence.

Discussing the YouGov findings with Retail Week, c-store specialist Co-op’s head of risk and retail compliance, Jenny Alleyne, said: “It’s definitely reasonable to believe that everyone thinks it’s easy to shoplift, but it doesn’t mean they will do it, just because we’ve created that perception.

“We’ve created that reality by being really transparent with our voice around how something needs to change, particularly from our colleagues who work in shops.”

For Alleyne, UK consumers’ belief that it would be easy to steal from a retailer is mostly down to the environment that is created.

She said: “We want to create an environment in our stores that’s nice and pleasant for people to shop in.

“I think when you combine what people see when they walk into stores and what they read and hear about the size and scope of the problem in the media, then that would contribute to a lot of people thinking it would be easier to steal”.

However, despite public perceptions, Alleyne said steps taken in the last year by the Co-op and other retailers were having a positive effect on the bottom line and staff safety.

“Things are getting better and we are seeing improvements in our stores,” she said. “There’s still a lot to do, and the numbers overall are still really high, but it’d be wrong to look back at the last couple of years and say that what we’ve been doing hasn’t made an impact”.