Small business group says police are not bothered about shoplifting

40 per cent of businesses in Greater Manchester think the police “are not bothered” by low level crime such as shoplifting, according to new research by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). 

In a piece of research carried out by FSB in Greater Manchester over autumn, the data shows low levels of confidence in GMP to take business crime seriously. 

Fewer than 10% of survey respondents believe police in GM take all business crimes seriously; and over 40% were of the opinion GMP were not bothered by low level business crime, such as shoplifting. A further 19% believed it would take a lot of their time to report an incident to police, while 31% had the opinion that business crime was at the back of the queue compared to other types of crime. 

At the last Mayor’s Question Time, chief constable Stephen Watson said his force would investigate all crimes and pushed back at the suggestion they didn’t care.

Last month TheBusinessDesk.com reported that CityCo chief executive Vaughan Allen, along with the City Council’s deputy leader and the Greater Manchester Police, have called on businesses to report crime, contrary to claims that the police aren’t interested.

“You will have seen recent national media coverage on the issue of retail crime. Much of the coverage has focused on an alleged unwillingness on the part of the police to respond to reports of retail crime, or to deal with offenders, and this is likely to have increased insecurity and caused worry to business owners and managers across the country,” the letter said.

Yet the FSB suggest that a third of businesses said they would only report a crime against their business if they needed a crime reference number for insurance reasons – meaning many crimes are likely to be unrecorded.  

Robert Downes, FSB Development Manager for Greater Manchester said: “Small businesses are a huge and increasing target for criminals. Both the new Home Secretary and GMP must act to provide the safety and security on which day-to-day economic life depends.

“We’ve been hearing countless reports of organised shoplifting over the past year, and our research  further shows how serious and unprecedented the problem is. This is certainly not what we need at a time when we look to grow our economy.

“Witnessing our small high-street shops and independent businesses losing their hard-earned money because these crimes are sometimes overlooked by authorities is disheartening, not to mention the mental toll on small business owners and their staff.” 

But the greatest instances of identified crime against businesses remain fraud. Invoice fraud (31%) is identified as the most common type of fraud. Card/cheque fraud (29%) comes in second and a quarter (26%) goes to unauthorised payments from bank cards/accounts. 

A majority (72%) of small businesses have encountered cybercriminals with phishing (92%) dominating the scene. One in ten have faced malware attacks, while a similar proportion (9%) had their social media accounts hacked.

As with the fraud, 44% of those falling victim to cybercrime lost up to £1,000. A third lost more than £1,000 and 6% say it cost more than £10,000. 

The surge in the number of crimes against small businesses is despite six in ten (65%) taking at least one measure to protect themselves against traditional crimes, such as installing or updating security, initiating a training programme, and improved insurance cover. An overwhelming majority (92%) gear up against cybercriminals and fraudsters, ranging from installing anti-virus software to updating software on IT systems regularly.

More than six in ten (66%) small businesses say they have reported their most impactful crime to the police (30%), their bank (20%) and their IT provider/service (18%). The rest chose not to report for a wide range of reasons, such as thinking the crime wasn’t serious enough to report, a lack of confidence in the police/Action Fraud, and no plans to make an insurance claim.