Let’s not underplay it by calling it shoplifting. It is theft from shops.

According to the Thames Valley Police, in the Windsor & Maidenhead area it rose from by 72% between 2022-23 and 2024-25, from 396 reported incidents to 680.

This mirrors the overall England & Wales picture where reported offences have gone up by approximately 50% over the same period and virtually doubled since 2020-21. In England, in the year to March there were 530,643 cases of shop theft (around 1 per minute).

And that is just the reported thefts. Many more thefts go unreported.

Under the Conservatives in 2014, theft of goods below £200 was deemed low value. Many police services do not investigate low value theft.

The British Retail Consortium estimated that shop theft cost retailers £1.8 billion in 2023. The cost of replacing stolen goods pushes prices up for all of us. It used to be that only high value items had theft-prevention devices. Some shops are now putting tags on meat, butter, chocolate and milk. There has been so much theft in London that the O2 store in the Strand in London, now only allows one customer in at a time and customers have to queue to knock on the door. The Jigsaw clothing store across the road has followed suit.

Difference between theft and robbery

According to the Theft Act 1968, shoplifting is defined as theft of goods from a shop “without force or threats”. Maximum penalties are a £7,000 fine or 7 years’ imprisonment for serious cases.

Matthew Barber, Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for the Thames Valley suggests the public should challenge thieves in shops. Which is easy to say from the comfort of his office.

The Thames Valley Police have a second category of crime: Robbery from a Business. This is when “force or the threat of force” is involved. It also can lead to 7 years imprisonment or a fine with no upper limit in the Crown Court.

In Windsor and Maidenhead there has been an even larger increase in this category of offence than shop theft. Admittedly, the overall numbers are smaller but the figures have gone up 32 times between 2021-22 and 2024-25, and 800% between 2022-23 and 2024-25.

In 2023 the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers surveyed 6000 shop workers and found that 18% reported being assaulted, more than double the figure for 2022. A different survey of retail workers in 2024 found that 70% were subject to verbal abuse and 46% were threatened. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) found that there were 8,800 incidents of violence against shop workers that resulted in injuries in 2022/23, an average of 115 violent incidents per day.

Customers should bear this in mind if they are thinking of following the Conservatives’ advice.

To its credit, the Labour government have introduced the Police and Crime Bill which scraps the £200 definition, such that the police will be required to investigate lower value offences. The Bill also includes a new offence of assaulting a shop worker, which carries a maximum sentence of between 6 months and two years.

What is the Lib Dem Answer?

Joshua Reynolds, the Liberal Democrat MP for Maidenhead describes Matthew Barber’s advice as reckless and dangerous. Liberal Democrat policy is to scrap police and crime commissioners and invest the money saved in front-line policing. However, that amount of money would not touch the sides in terms of the investment needed to turn the situation around.

Matthew Barber’s salary is £88,600. The salary of a mid-level constable is around £38,000 p.a. (for someone on pay point 3 or 4). By the time you add on their shift allowances, pension contribution, employer’s national insurance contribution, training and development budget, equipment and uniform and backoffice admin costs, the actual cost is estimated to be around £65,518, to employ one mid-range police constable.
So Josh’s plan is to sack the PCC and hire a police officer.
Given there are overheads in Matthew Barber’s salary too, let’s be generous and say Joshua could take on 2 extra officers.
That’s his plan to reduce crime across the whole of the Thames Valley.

What is Reform UK’s Answer?

Reform policy is to increase the number of police officers by 30,000 by the end of the next Parliament. Secondly, instructions would go out to the police to focus much more attention on crimes that affect ordinary people such as shop theft.