Since April last year, Station Road has seen a rise in organised and targeted shoplifting, having a detrimental impact on local businesses.
To tackle this ongoing issue, we organised a shoplifting summit earlier this month with Iain Duncan Smith MP senior representatives from the local police and representatives from High Street Chains, Boots, Tesco, Co-op, Greggs, and Amazon, to discuss how we can all work together to tackle this issue.
We stressed to all present that they must report the shoplifting to the police, no matter how small or large the cost of the items stolen. Despite this issue having a massive impact on all businesses on Station Road, some large high-street chains are failing to report. This means the crime figures do not represent the reality and our small independent shops unfortunately do not get the police resources they need and deserve.
Going forward, we are looking at establishing a formal communication network between store managers to better share intelligence and support one another. This will ensure prolific offenders are linked to offences and rightly prosecuted.
The police have also agreed to allocate more budget and resources to tackling the issue.
