The number of shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales in a year has passed half a million for the first time, figures show.
A total of 516,971 offences were logged by forces in 2024, up 20% from 429,873 in 2023.
The figure is the highest since current police recording practices began in the year to March 2003, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Shoplifting offences have been running at record levels for the past two years and have seen a “sharp rise” since the Covid-19 pandemic, the ONS said.
Meanwhile 152,416 theft from the person offences were recorded last year, up 22% from 125,379 in 2023 and the highest number since current data began in 2003.
A total of 1.80 million theft offences were recorded, up 1% on 2023.
The increase was driven by the rise in shoplifting and theft from the person, the ONS said.
Responding to the data, policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said: “This Labour Government will not tolerate the criminality blighting our communities.
“That’s why we’re putting almost 3,000 more bobbies on the beat in neighbourhood roles this year, and under our leadership, these crimes will receive the attention they deserve.
“We are already starting to reverse the Tories’ decade of decline on charge rates.”
She added: “Today’s figures are yet more evidence of the damage done by destroying neighbourhood policing as the Tories did over 14 years.”
But shadow home secretary Chris Philp said law and order was “taking a backseat under Labour”, adding: “They must urgently get a grip to ensure our police have the resources they need to cut crime and keep the British people safe.”
Of the 494,086 police-recorded shoplifting offences in England and Wales in 2024 that have so far been assigned an outcome, 19% (93,156) resulted in a charge or summons, up from 17% in 2023, while 57% (281,107) of investigations were completed with no suspect identified, unchanged on the previous year, PA news agency analysis of Home Office figures shows.
Reacting to the figures, Tom Ironside from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said retail crime is continuing to “spiral out of control” with shop theft costing retailers more than £2.2 billion a year.
The director of business and regulation at the BRC said: “While retailers are spending £1.8 billion on anti-crime measures, thieves are becoming bolder and more aggressive, resulting in an increase in violence and abuse against staff.
“It is vital we see more police resource allocated to tackle this epidemic of crime.”
He added a survey by the BRC of major retailers showed there are more than 20 million incidents of shoplifting a year but many go unreported as shopkeepers “simply don’t have faith” that action will be taken by the police.
“While the ONS statistics show that shoplifting is at record levels, their figures severely underestimate the problem,” he said.
“Their figures are equivalent to less than two incidents per shop per year; if you ask most shopkeepers they’ll tell you they’re lucky if a day goes by without a shoplifting incident.”
Andrew Goodacre, chief executive of the British Independent Retailers Association, also described the figures as likely to be “the tip of the iceberg”.
He added: “The Government’s Crime and Policing Bill introduced in February and last week’s announcement about increased police presence on high streets are steps in the right direction, but retailers need to see immediate, tangible results.”
Elsewhere in the ONS data, 54,587 knife crime offences were recorded by police in England and Wales in 2024, up 2% from 53,413 in 2023 but 1% below the pre-pandemic figure of 55,170 in the year to March 2020.
The number of offences involving possession of an article with a blade or point was 28,150, up 1% from 27,892 and higher than the pre-pandemic figure of 23,264 in 2019/20.
There were 216 knife-enabled homicides, down 16% from 258 in 2023.
Billy Gazard of the ONS said: “While police-recorded offences involving knives and sharp instruments have increased, there has been a marked decrease in firearms offences.
“However, shoplifting offences continue to rise, reaching half a million offences in the year ending December 2024, the highest on record.”
The data showed the number of homicides recorded by police in England and Wales fell to its lowest level in a decade.
Some 535 offences were recorded in 2024, down 5% from 563 in 2023 and the lowest figure since 533 in the 12 months to March 2014.
Overall, police recorded 6.64 million crimes in England and Wales in 2024, down by 1% from 6.68 million in 2023.
The total is up from 4.03 million a decade earlier in 2013/14, but this is likely to reflect “changes in police activity and recording practices” as well as genuine changes in trends in crimes reported to and recorded by forces, and “should not be used to say that overall crime has increased”, the ONS said.
Home Office figures also published on Thursday showed the proportion of all offences recorded during the latest period which resulted in a charge or summons was 6.9%, up from 6.2% in 2023.
The proportion of investigations into crimes recorded by police in the same period which were completed with no suspect identified stood at 39%, compared with 40.6% in the previous year.
The data also showed the proportion of cases which had evidence difficulties from a victim not supporting the action was 25.1%, compared with 25.3% in the previous year.
Figures from the separate ONS crime survey for England and Wales suggest people aged 16 and over experienced 9.61 million incidents of crime in 2024, up from 8.40 million in 2023.
The rise is mainly due to a 33% increase in fraud, which accounted for 4.10 million incidents in the survey, and a 13% increase in theft, to 2.93 million.
The overall total of 9.61 million is lower than the 11.22 million for 2016/17, when fraud and computer misuse were first included in the figures.
Mr Gazard added: “The increase in crime recorded by the survey in the recent period has been driven by fraud and theft.
“Notably there has been a significant increase in theft from the person, with mobile phones the most common item stolen.”
Experiences of crimes, as measured by the ONS survey, have been on a broad downwards trend since the mid-1990s.
The survey covers a range of personal and household victim-based crime, including theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse and violence with or without injury, but does not include sexual offences, stalking, harassment and domestic abuse, which are presented separately.
