How the retail sector is tackling violence against staff

For a brief peri­od, when the first wave of Covid struck the UK, the nation held retail work­ers in almost the same high esteem as it did NHS staff. After the first lock­down was imposed in March 2020, these pre­vi­ous­ly unsung key work­ers – many of whom weren’t equipped with ade­quate per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment – were laud­ed for keep­ing every­one fed, watered and stocked up with loo roll. 

But the good­will was short-lived. The public’s ini­tial grat­i­tude turned into frus­tra­tion as the government’s social dis­tanc­ing regime forced shop­pers to queue up out­side stores and wear masks inside them. In far too many cas­es, that frus­tra­tion turned into aggres­sion. 

The British Retail Con­sor­tium (BRC) Crime Sur­vey 2022 Report reveals that inci­dents of ver­bal and phys­i­cal abuse tar­get­ing retail work­ers in the UK near­ly tripled in num­ber year on year dur­ing the 12 months end­ed 31 March 2021 to 1,300 every day. 

Deal­ing with vio­lence against staff became the num­ber-one con­cern for retail­ers dur­ing the depths of the Covid cri­sis, accord­ing to the BRC’s research. The report con­cludes that the “response from the police has failed to meet the chal­lenge”, giv­en that 60% of the sur­vey respon­dents described this as either poor or very poor. Only 4% of cas­es result­ed in pros­e­cu­tions, com­pared with 6% the pre­vi­ous year.

The enact­ment of more strin­gent leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect pub­lic ser­vice work­ers – includ­ing retail staff – from abuse in their jobs has come not a moment too soon, then. Under the amend­ed Police, Crime, Sen­tenc­ing and Courts Act 2022, which has been in effect since 28 June, a com­mon assault on any­one work­ing in a retail store will be classed as an aggra­vat­ed offence and there­fore attract tougher penal­ties. 

While experts in the field agree that this is a wel­come devel­op­ment, many believe that more should be done to pro­tect retail work­ers, as the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis caus­es fur­ther ten­sion for mil­lions of cash-strapped shop­pers. 

An enquiry by the Com­mons home affairs select com­mit­tee last year uncov­ered just how dire the sit­u­a­tion had become. Its report con­clud­ed: “It is com­plete­ly unac­cept­able that vio­lence and abuse towards retail work­ers is becom­ing endem­ic in British soci­ety,” adding that there was “over­whelm­ing evi­dence that the police response is sim­ply fail­ing to match” the esca­la­tion in hos­til­i­ties. 

Tougher sen­tenc­ing was one of the committee’s many rec­om­men­da­tions. These ranged from ensur­ing that police and crime com­mis­sion­ers (PCCs) pri­ori­tise tack­ling such crimes to estab­lish­ing more effec­tive report­ing sys­tems. 

Chris Brook-Carter is CEO of the Retail Trust, a char­i­ty pro­mot­ing the wel­fare of all those who work in the indus­try. He says: “The prob­lem with this aggres­sion is that it’s become a social norm. Abuse is one of the top issues affect­ing staff well­be­ing.  Com­bined with dete­ri­o­rat­ing men­tal health from the pan­dem­ic and con­cerns about the cost of liv­ing, it’s prompt­ing many peo­ple to con­sid­er leav­ing their jobs in retail for good.”

He con­tin­ues: “The new leg­is­la­tion sends out a much clear­er mes­sage that this kind of behav­iour will not be tol­er­at­ed. It’s also impor­tant that retail employ­ers unite to pro­vide the right pro­tec­tion for col­leagues fac­ing unac­cept­able threats.”

Jason Birks, nation­al pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Retail­ers, agrees that stronger legal pro­tec­tion should be just the start. 

“The impor­tant thing is that the police and the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice coop­er­ate to ensure that this new law is an effec­tive deter­rent, not just a piece of paper,” he says. “It’s essen­tial that retail­ers report all inci­dents to high­light the scale of the prob­lem. And, if retail crime is to be tack­led head on, the police response must improve.”

One con­stab­u­lary that’s lead­ing the way in this respect is Sus­sex Police. Katy Bourne has been elect­ed three times as the force’s PCC since com­mis­sion­ers replaced police author­i­ties in 2012.

“When I was first elect­ed, I was the only com­mis­sion­er in the coun­try to include busi­ness crime in their police and crime plan,” claims the Con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cian and for­mer own­er of a leisure busi­ness. “I do under­stand there are huge demands on police time, but we know that 20% of offend­ers cre­ate 80% of crimes. They cause so much mis­ery, yet nobody was tar­get­ing them.”

When Bourne set up the Safer Sus­sex Busi­ness Part­ner­ship – involv­ing retail­ers, crime experts and police – in ear­ly 2020, a cru­cial issue came to light.  

“While the police, who are dri­ven by evi­dence, were telling me that every­thing was fine, busi­ness­es were say­ing that it was ter­ri­ble,” she says. “We found that retail­ers were report­ing about 8% of inci­dents and say­ing: ‘The police don’t show up. They don’t do any­thing, so what’s the point?’ But, if 92% of crimes in stores weren’t being report­ed, how could the police ever respond to them? It just need­ed some­one to bring the two sides togeth­er. We all recog­nised that the sit­u­a­tion couldn’t con­tin­ue.”

The intro­duc­tion of an inno­v­a­tive ‘one touch’ sys­tem slashed the time it took to report crimes from half an hour to two min­utes. Mean­while, Sus­sex Police set up a ded­i­cat­ed busi­ness crime unit to respond to such reports. 

“Focus­ing on busi­ness crime means that we’re get­ting a high­er ‘solved’ rate. This has tak­en a while, but we’ve built up the con­fi­dence with our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and it’s already mak­ing a dif­fer­ence,” Bourne says. “My col­leagues around the coun­try have since start­ed set­ting up their own busi­ness part­ner­ships.”

And, with spe­cial­ist bod­ies such as the Nation­al Busi­ness Crime Cen­tre and the Nation­al Retail Crime Steer­ing Group grow­ing in influ­ence, fur­ther ini­tia­tives are com­ing thick and fast. They include the pro­vi­sion of body-worn cam­eras for work­ers and the pro­duc­tion of videos offer­ing guid­ance on how to stay safe while man­ag­ing risky sit­u­a­tions – for instance, when ask­ing cus­tomers for proof of age. 

Naz Dos­sa is CEO of Peo­ple­safe, a provider of per­son­al secu­ri­ty devices used by enter­pris­es such as the Co-op. He says that a fea­ture of its cam­eras is that “they have front-fac­ing screens, so that mem­bers of the pub­lic can see that their actions are being record­ed. This serves as a deter­rent to poten­tial offend­ers, as any­one can clear­ly see that, if they were to com­mit ver­bal and/or phys­i­cal abuse, the cam­era would col­lect evi­dence of that.”

The Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­ve­nience Stores is ask­ing PCCs to sign a pledge to make tack­ling retail crime a pri­or­i­ty. And the Retail Trust has joined forces with law firm Foot Anstey to set up a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme designed to “show­case the retail busi­ness­es that are tak­ing the appro­pri­ate steps to pro­tect their staff while giv­ing retail work­ers… the clar­i­ty they deserve”. 

Per­haps the sim­plest ini­tia­tive of all is a move­ment urg­ing cus­tomers to be nicer to retail work­ers. The nation­al #Shop­Kind cam­paign aims to encour­age cour­te­ous behav­iour in shops, high­light the vital role of retail work­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty and raise aware­ness of the scale and impact of abuse against them.   

“Just those two words – ‘shop’ and ‘kind’ – say every­thing you need to, don’t they?” says Bourne, who launched the inau­gur­al Keep­ing Christ­mas Kind cam­paign in Sus­sex in 2020. 

Brook-Carter agrees: “We have so much to thank retail work­ers for. The very least they deserve is the abil­i­ty to do their jobs with­out fear of being abused or assault­ed.”