Unfortunately 2024 will be partly remembered for all the criminal activity in the retail sector, with forecourts hit by a double whammy of drive-offs and shoplifting.
In the summer we reported that drive-off failure to pay for fuel incidents had risen by 12.8% between April and June, compared with the three months before, representing the largest rise in these cases in 12 months.
The data, provided by the British Oil Security Syndicate (BOSS) from its Payment Watch debt recovery scheme, also revealed that although the number of no means of payment (NMoP) events was 4.1% lower than the previous quarter, continuing the decline in recent months, the average cost of NMoP rose by 3.7% to £69.89.
During the second quarter of 2024, the average number of unpaid fuel incidents per site increased by 2.4% – with 28.8 per site, with NMoP accounted for 56.4% of unpaid fuel reports to Payment Watch.
Meanwhile, the Office for National Statistics revealed that shoplifting in England and Wales was at a 20-year high, with 469,788 offences logged in the year to June 2024, up 29% on the previous year.
And in November we reported how an exclusive Sky News and Association of Convenience Stores survey revealed that 77% of retailers suffered from retail crime within just one week at the beginning of October.
These figures are shocking and these crimes should not be happening but retailers are fighting back.
In February, at the Forecourt Trader Summit, retailer Ben Lawrence told the audience how he was employing a security guard at his BP Sholing site were while staff were utilising headsets to allow for easier communication and a quicker response to incidents.
In the summer we reported that Top 50 Indie Sewell on the go’s staff were trialling body cameras
Murco dealer Veer Patel is preventing up to £200 a month of stock being stolen by fitting Chirp-protect alarmed security tags onto high value items in his family’s Spar store.
For drive-offs, many retailers have turned to Vars Technology which uses ANPR to keep track of drivers and events. Top 50 Indie Valli Forecourts says the tech has prevented £630,000 a year in drive-offs across its 16 sites.
Vars expanded its services earlier in the year with the launch of next-generation facial recognition technology which captures images of everyone entering a forecourt store and matches them against a list of known criminals.
Police response to retail crime varies widely and in many cases, retailers get no help.
In November, we carried the story of Kavita and Sanjay Pilani, who own Empire Garage in Mablethorpe, and have been plagued by drive-offs. However, those drive-offs were simply dismissed by a police superintendent as being committed by people who were ‘not having a great day’.
