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The Plan Made Big Promises On High Street Crime. A Year On, The Numbers Have Gone Quiet.

ended 21. July 2026

Crime and safety are back at the top of the national conversation this summer, and small firms have been shouting about it for years. So it is worth checking what the Government's Small Business Plan promised last July on protecting the high street, and what its one-year update still bothers to say.

A year ago the language was bold. The plan named a mix of thousands more neighbourhood police, a new criminal offence of assaulting a shopworker, and the scrapping of the so-called £200 rule that had effectively told police to wave through lower-value shop theft. It cited retail crime costing shops around £4.2bn a year and more than half a million shop theft offences, up 20%. The update this month still points to a shopworker-assault offence and £7m for police, and notes charges for shop theft have risen. But the eye-catching specifics that led the story last summer, the officer numbers and the scrapped £200 threshold, have faded from the small business document. The 13,000 neighbourhood officers remain a live manifesto pledge, tracked by Full Fact, but they have quietly dropped out of the plan that is supposed to be about your business.

And here is the bit that should worry every HR team. While ministers talk tough on shop theft, the staff who actually stand in a thief's way are losing their jobs for it. In April 2026 Waitrose dismissed Walker Smith after 17 years for trying to grab a bag of stolen Easter eggs. Weeks earlier Sainsbury's sacked Gary MacArthur after 15 years for escorting a repeat offender out of the store, on the very day he performed CPR on the branch's collapsed security guard. Morrisons let a worker of nearly three decades go for much the same thing. The retailers say their "do not intervene" policies exist because tackling thieves gets people killed, and they are not wrong about the risk. So the state says stop the thieves, and the employer says touch a thief, and you are fired. The shopworker is stuck in the middle.

Here is where people split:

  • A member of staff with 17 years' service, sacked for stopping a thief. Brave worker treated shamefully, or a manager doing the right thing to keep everyone safe? You have to pick.
  • Should "do not intervene" policies be scrapped, or are they the only thing standing between a shop assistant and a knife?
  • If the Government wants shopworkers protected, should it be legally backing the ones who step in, rather than leaving them to be dismissed for it?

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2 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Kate Underwood
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
This one boils my blood. The state says stop the thief. The boss says touch them and you're sacked. Some staff even have targets to cut theft, then a 'do not intervene' policy tying their hands. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, and the worker's piggy in the middle. And we all pay for it at the till. Most people want to do the right thing, so fed-up customers start stepping in too. Then the have-a-go hero is the one nicked for ABH or GBH while the thief strolls off. A man with 17 years' service, gone over a bag of Easter eggs. Owners, decide where you stand and say it out loud. Put it in writing, train on it, and back your team when they do the right thing. Don't leave them stranded. Hero one day, out the next isn't a policy. It's a trap.
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Editor
Harvey Dhillon
Founder & CEO at Zmartly
Every item walked out of a shop comes off the profit, not the turnover. That is why theft frightens a small retailer far more than the price tag suggests. On a thin margin, replacing one £20 stolen item can mean selling £200 more just to stand still.

Retail crime now costs the sector around £4.2 billion a year, with customer theft alone up more than 20 per cent, on the British Retail Consortium's own figures. For a corner shop that is not a statistic. It is the difference between a wage drawn and a wage skipped.

Then there is the second bill, the one HR pays. When a long-serving worker is dismissed for stopping a thief, the shop loses experience it cannot quickly replace and risks a tribunal on top. The state says stop the theft, the policy says do not touch it, and the owner carries both.

If you run a shop, cost your shrinkage like a line in the accounts, because that is exactly what it is.