The Met Police and some of the UK’s largest retailers have agreed a new action plan to tackle shoplifting, violence and organised retail crime across London.
Senior leaders from the Met, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and around 20 retail organisations met at New Scotland Yard to agree stronger partnership working in the capital.
The plan focuses on faster evidence sharing, better support through the criminal justice process and giving retail crime a higher priority across London’s high streets.
Under the agreement, police will prioritise attendance at violent retail incidents and cases where an offender has been detained by store staff or security teams.
The Met has also committed to providing retailers with better updates on reported crimes, while focusing enforcement on prolific offenders and organised crime groups.
Retailers, meanwhile, have agreed to preserve and share higher-quality evidence, including CCTV and body-worn camera footage.
They will also provide police with a single point of contact to reduce delays and give colleagues the time needed to support the criminal justice process.
The agreement comes amid mounting pressure on retailers to tackle a wave of shoplifting and violence against store staff.
London accounts for around a fifth of all retail crime incidents in the UK, according to the BRC.
The Met said shoplifting offences in London had fallen by nearly four per cent over the past year, while arrests rose by almost 50 per cent in 2025/26.
The positive outcome rate for retail crime, meaning a charge or caution, also rose 123 per cent to 5,996.
However, retail bosses have warned that a relatively small number of repeat offenders continue to drive a disproportionate amount of crime.
Earlier Met data found 104 prolific shoplifters were linked to 4,389 offences over the past two financial years, representing almost a third of all incidents where a suspect was identified.
The force said those offenders committed at least 31 offences each before receiving a custodial sentence, while 97 per cent continued offending as they moved through the justice system.
The Met, BRC and Retail Trust have already called on the government to fast-track court cases for prolific offenders and strengthen enforcement of court orders.
BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said: “We hope today’s action plan can boost collaboration between retailers and the Metropolitan Police. Working together and sharing intelligence is essential to tackling the scourge of retail crime.
“Theft already costs shops hundreds of millions of pounds every year, money that would be better spent investing in lower prices and improving the customer experience.”
She added that the Crime and Policing Act gave police new powers to clamp down on offenders, but said better intelligence sharing, reporting and enforcement would be critical to turning around the trend.
Met Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said shoplifting had a “corrosive impact” on businesses, retail workers and communities.
“By putting more officers into our neighbourhoods, we have cut shoplifting offences by nearly four per cent, but we know there’s still more work to be done,” he said.
“Sharing evidence is crucial in building strong cases and stopping offenders. We will continue to work with business to ensure incidents are reported to bring those offenders to justice.”
Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime Kaya Comer-Schwartz said City Hall funding was putting more officers on the streets in the West End and other hotspots across the capital.
She said the roundtable had also discussed the role of live facial recognition technology in the West End and new IT platforms to deter offenders and bring criminals to justice.
Retail Trust chief executive Chris Brook-Carter said the action plan showed police and retailers were taking shared responsibility for improving reporting and supporting shopworkers.
“Retail workers need to know that every incident of theft, violence or abuse will be treated with urgency and that they will never be left to deal with the consequences alone,” he said.
The agreement follows the BRC’s latest crime report, which found violence and abuse against shopworkers had fallen from 2,000 incidents a day to 1,600, but remained far above pre-pandemic levels.
The report also warned that organised criminal groups were exploiting gaps in enforcement, online resale platforms and prosecution thresholds.
The government’s Crime and Policing Act creates a specific offence of assaulting a retail worker and removes the previous £200 threshold for low-value shop theft.
Convenience retailers are also spending heavily to protect staff and stock, with the Association of Convenience Stores estimating that local shops invested a record £313m in crime prevention and detection measures over the past year.
For retailers, the London action plan marks a shift from broad concern about shop theft to a more practical focus on evidence, reporting, police attendance and repeat offenders.
The test will be whether the new commitments translate into faster action on the ground for stores that have long argued retail crime is still being treated too lightly.
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