The Metropolitan Police has said it will prioritise attendance to violent retail incidents and focus enforcement on prolific offenders, while retailers pledged to ensure evidence like CCTV and bodycam footage was preserved and shared.
The action plan emerged after a roundtable at New Scotland Yard in London yesterday, including the assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, two deputy mayors and around 20 retailers.
In addition to violent incidents, police will also prioritise attendance to situations where the offender is detained. They also agreed to improve updates to retailers on the progress of reported crimes. As well as prolific offenders, organised crime groups will be targeted in enforcement efforts.
The retailers present, which included some of the largest in the country, said they would make sure police had a single point of contact to reduce delays and allow the time needed for colleagues to support the criminal justice process.
London accounts for a fifth of all retail crime incidents, according to the British Retail Consortium, despite being home to 13% of the UK’s population.
The Metropolitan Police, which polices the capital, made 50% more arrests across the 2025/26 period than the year before. Charges and cautions related to retail crime also reached 5,996, a year-on-year rise of 123%.
“We hope today’s action plan can boost collaboration between retailers and the Metropolitan Police: working together and sharing intelligence is essential to tackling the scourge of retail crime. Theft already costs shops hundreds of millions of pounds every year – money that would be better spent investing in lower prices and improving the customer experience,” said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC.
“The Crime and Policing Act offers police new powers to clamp down on criminals and it is essential that offenders are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Better intelligence sharing, improving reporting, and robust enforcement are critical to turning the tide on retail crime once and for all.”
Assistant commissioner Matt Twist said: “By putting more officers into our neighbourhoods, we have cut shoplifting offences by nearly 4%, but we know there’s still more work to be done.
“Sharing evidence is crucial in building strong cases and stopping offenders, we will continue to work with business to ensure incidents are reported to bring those offenders to justice.”
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