High Streets UK, un gruppo che rappresenta 5.000 aziende del Regno Unito, chiede finanziamenti recintati per la polizia per proteggere le destinazioni chiave dello shopping
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/oxford-street-crime-shoplifting-phone-theft-b1231325.html
di Low_Map4314
16 commenti
Police funding is going to be cut in the next budget, so zero chance of that lol.
They’re offering to pay for this special policing of their business right?
Like football clubs do?
No? They want the **taxpayer** to pay for it?
Fuck off.
Is that not why they are supposed to hire security guards?
Maybe they should start hiring security guards whose job description is more than just to be tall and stand around doing nothing.
Catch 22.
Lots of people here are saying the shops should pay for it themselves. And I get it. But also we should all want to live in a society where theft is properly dealt with, whether it’s from private individuals or from shops.
Otherwise we’re just going to end up with yet more of a gulf between rich and poor. Retailers will just open in nicer, higher margin, areas only, meaning fewer shops in poorer areas and less affordable shopping.
Even if this goes ahead, regardless of who pays, we continue on our journey towards a South Africa or Brazil style society where you have to drive from one secure location to another because the streets are too dangerous. (Though both countries also have trouble with carjackings.) You have to bridge the wealth gap so these crimes aren’t incentivised. Doubt it will ever happen though.
All the people calling for retailers to simply pay for their own security guards have no idea about the realities of retail crime, nor the pressures of retail.
Retail security guards do not have the power to arrest or prosecute, that’s up to the police.
As a customer and member of the public, If you’re out on the street or in a centre and you get pickpocketed, phone snatched out of your hand or mugged, you need the police, not a retailer.
That’s before you even get started on shoplifting and more importantly violence and abuse against shop workers.
https://brc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/corporate-affairs/2025/ungated/retail-crime-spiralling-out-of-control/#:~:text=Retail%20crime%20is%20at%20its,from%201%2C300%20the%20year%20before.
Big chains like Tesco etc can afford their own security, but what about charity shops, convenience stores and smaller specialists? The police need to do more to support the little guys. Still waiting for Labour to make good on their pledge to make assaulting a shop worker a crime as well.
[https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/a-new-specific-offence-of-assaulting-a-shopworker/](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/a-new-specific-offence-of-assaulting-a-shopworker/)
All they have to do is show up when they’re called and actually do some policing instead of shrugging and saying a prosecution is unlikely or there’s not enough evidence. But they’re under-resourced themselves and as someone else in the thread said, are unlikely to get a budget increase, probably more like a reduction.
High street businesses, likely already heavily subsidized by tax payers due to the wages they pay being so low that people working there also need to claim benefits to afford to live, want more tax payers money.
I agree that policing needs more social presence, but that needs to be paid for by someone, and shouldn’t explicitly be for the benefit of businesses.
Why doesn’t the government just fund a few roaming sets of undercover police. Just shove them into wherever is currently getting a lot of reports of shoplifting and have them arrest people for a few days. Move onto next place.
Odds are it’s actually only a relatively small amount of people doing the vast majority of shoplfiting.
But it’s a highly visible thing to people, and it sticks with you if you see someone flagrantly walk into a Greggs or whatever, empty the shelves, and tell the shop keepers to fuck off.
It’s erodes trust. Trust in the state, trust in our fellow man, trust in the police..
It’s a big problem and if we let it fester we’ll speed run turning into a low trust society.
I will always mention this when shoplifting enforcement comes up, but shoplifting is an inherent part of the self-serve model most shops use. They trust customers to gather their own stuff, bring it to the front, and pay for it honestly. They even trust customers to ring through their own purchases these days. It’s a whole model that, clearly, doesn’t prioritize security.
So, rather than change their model in any way to be less comically insecure, they argue for more taxpayer-subsidized security for their products and premises they deliberately made insecure.
Protect the capitalists at any cost to the tax payer.
maybe if business wants to benefit from police protection at an agreed “service level” they should pay for it.
Just one more reason to not feel bad about the death of the high street.
Before the 2024 general election various [pledges were made](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1rrdzrjz1no) to increase police numbers and tackle exactly these issues, instead police numbers continue to fall and there’s no serious plan to rectify the situation. I realise it takes times to turn things around but it’s been almost a year since the general election now, there should at the very least be a recruitment plan in place!
It’s called private security, hire them instead of trying to get tax payers to foot the bill.
I will gladly pay to prosecute and imprison them as it’s not something I want to see within the community.
Have they tried: more staff and not putting items in places where they can easily be stolen?
Sorry, times have changed. You need to modernise and get with it
Find the comments on this thread wild, the high street is usually the lifeblood of towns, villages and citys. Having a well policed high street shouldn’t be controversial. Shops already pay large amounts to the council and indeed HMRC.