SGF Crime Report and Safer Business Guide 2024/2025

Published at our annual Crime & Wellbeing Seminar, which took place on 13th March, our Crime Report & Safer Business Guide 2024/25 highlights the escalation in retail crime over the past year.

Findings gathered from our SGF Crime Survey show that almost two thirds of stores (62.5%) now have at least one member of staff who has experienced mental health & wellbeing issues as a result of retail crime. While 83.5% of those surveyed report an increase in violence toward shop workers.

Adding to that, the average cost of retail crime skyrocketed to £19,673 per store in 2024/25 (up 38% from the previous year). As an average across the 755 stores which took part in the SGF annual crime survey. Scaling up the sample to represent all 5,220 convenience stores in Scotland, this accounts for an annual cost of approximately £102.7 million which is crippling the sector. Taking into account the total costs of crime, including investments made on prevention, British Retail Consortium estimate that the total cost is £4.2 billion across the UK (which SGF approximates as £420million for Scotland given as a nation we make up around 10% of the UK economy).

Information gathered for the report also shows that:

• 99.8% of convenience retailers agree that shoplifting has increased in the past year, while 99.5% say that shoplifting is now a daily occurrence.

• More than eight out of every ten stores report that Hate Crime occurs once a month, while almost all say that violence against staff occurs at least once a month (83.3% and 99.6% respectively).

• Likewise, almost all (98.8%) of respondents also report experiencing weekly incidents of abuse when refusing a sale or when asking for proof of age.

Please find information on our recent SGF Crime Seminar, alongside a video produced by Daniel Johnson MSP highlighting the impacts of retail crime on businesses and communities in Scotland: SGF Crime Seminar & Daniel Johnson MSP (video).