Robbery in England and Wales returns to pre-pandemic levels, as shoplifting hits record high
A surge in shoplifting and so-called 'snatch thefts' have fuelled a rise in the overall crime rate in England and Wales, as ITV News Social Affairs Correspondent Sarah Corker reports
Robbery and violence involving injury have risen back up to levels not seen since before the pandemic in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The number of robberies rose to around 139,000 recorded incidents between 2023 and 2024, compared to 60,000 the year before.
Cases of violence with injury also returned to pre-pandemic levels, increasing to an estimated 562,000 incidents in 2024 from around 376,000 incidents the previous year.
Offences involving firearms have decreased compared to last year, the data shows, while those involving knives and sharp objects have gone up by 4%.
While the rate of overall theft remained the same, data from the ONS also found incidents of "snatch theft" had more doubled between 2023 and 2024 compared to the year prior. The number of incidents jumped from 32,000 to approximately 78,000, a rise of 144%.
More than 469,000 shoplifting offences were recorded between June 2023 and June 2024, up from around 365,000 incidents between June 2022 and June 2023.
The ONS report said this is the highest figure since current police recording practices began for the year ending March 2003.
Elsewhere, it was revealed that consumer and retail fraud increased by 19% - nearly a million incidents - last year.
Carol Alexander, a professor of finance at the University of Sussex, fell victim to authorised push payment (APP) fraud around two years ago, with fraudsters stealing nearly £80,000.
Professor Alexander eventually recovered all of her money 18 months later after involving the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.
Speaking to ITV News, she said levels of online fraud are growing because the "internet is broken".
Professor Alexander said: "The 'Web 3.0' will be built on blockchains, which are impossible to change.
"They're called immutable things and [are] very much more secure than these application processor interfaces [API].
"The API connection that I have between here, my machine and the bank is very easy to hack as we know.
"So we need to move to a new form of internet, which is based on blockchains. Until that point, everything is vulnerable to attack."
Professor Alexander added that in order to better protect the public, the UK government must introduce greater regulation.
Professor Carol Alexander told ITV News what needs to be done to help tackle growing cases of online fraud
"The UK has been better than some other countries in trying to push against the release of generative AI [artificial intelligence], but the use of data… at the moment, we just see litigation.
"So actors, they are litigating against AI companies for just taking data for free, but data should not be available as it is, and we need more regulation to prevent that."
The ONS data published on Thursday follows figures from earlier this year, which showed shoplifting was already at its highest level in England and Wales since police records began in 2003.
The Policing Minister Dame Diana Johnson said the data showed the "scale of the challenge we have inherited in our mission to make streets safer."
"Too many town centres have been decimated by record levels of shoplifting, and communities have been left shaken by rising levels of knife crime, snatch theft and robbery. This cannot continue.
"This government will restore neighbourhood policing across the country, put thousands more dedicated officers out on our streets and scrap the £200 shoplifting threshold, bringing an end to the effective impunity for thieves who steal low value goods."
Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.
ITV News spoke to one shopkeeper who has regularly fallen victim to shoplifting.
Paul Cheema, who runs Malcolm's Stores Costcutter in Coventry, had an incident where a person demanded money from the till
He said: "Taking the money is one thing, but we're not here to be abused. We're here to provide a service."
"You get abused on a weekly basis. Nine out of ten times we let it go over our head because you then become demoralised and we think 'what am I doing this for anymore?' We're here because we love retail and we love our community.
"I think the police response is pretty poor. I'm not blaming the police... This is down to the resources that the police have got in Coventry, they can't bEe everywhere at any one single time. They do their best.
"Government need to put more pressure on the local Police Crime Commissioner, to provide more adequate beat on the street again in order to solve this problem."
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) found in August that £1.8 billion had been lost to customer theft over the previous 12 months, and £1.2 billion was spent by retailers trying to prevent crime.
Graham Wynn, from the BRC, has called for greater protection for retail workers, saying: "The figures published by the ONS reflect the scale of the issue which retailers face on a day-to-day basis.
"The thieves committing these crimes are becoming bolder, more aggressive, and are more frequently armed with weapons.
"The government must ensure that the standalone offence for assaulting a retail worker passes into law as soon as possible to protect all retail workers and to send a clear message that this behaviour will not be tolerated.
"This will also give police the data they need to allocate resources to tackle this epidemic we are currently facing."
Have you heard our new podcast Talking Politics? Every week Tom, Robert and Anushka dig into the biggest issues dominating the political agenda…