Shops v shoplifters - who is winning the battle?

"It's absolutely relentless, multiple times a day with multiple offenders. The same people just come back and back and back."

Lou Genever has run a shop in the centre of Gloucester for the past 20 years and says the problem of shoplifting has never been as bad as it is now.

The latest figures obtained by the BBC from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request would appear to back up her feelings. They show that in 2025-26 Gloucestershire saw an 8.2% rise in crime, one of 11 police forces nationwide to see a year-on-year increase.

But police in the West say they want more businesses to report crimes which, although it might make their figures worse, would help with prosecutions.

Officers, backed by CCTV monitoring and radio networks, say that information will help them build cases against the thieves - many of whom are well known as repeat offenders.

"Retailers can't do any more than they are doing," says Genever. "I don't really know what the answer is because the people that are doing it don't care.

"I will watch them and say 'what are you doing, give me my stock back' and they just say 'no' and walk out with it.

"They know I can't put hands on them."

Ann Dinan, who has been working at Poundland in Gloucester for many years, says that while she loves the job, shoplifting now comes hand-in-hand with aggression.

"I've been threatened a couple of times - things like 'I'll have you after work', she says.

"I've had members of staff being pushed by shoplifters as well. It can be scary."

Like Genever, Dinan says current shoplifting levels are the worst she has ever seen.

Standing between local businesses and the shoplifters are city protection officers Mike and Nigel, who say they know almost all the prolific local criminals by name.

The cat-and-mouse type game they play with the thieves takes up the majority of their days.

"For every one we're stopping, four or five will walk out the door," says Nigel.

"We're dealing with 11 and 12 year olds that are stealing out of Primark to get clothing."

The pair have limited powers. They cannot make arrests and often just have to take stolen stock back to shops.

But every week they join a meeting involving the police, city council and other organisations to focus on how to stop the thieves.

Emily Gibbon, from the Gloucester Business Improvement District (BID), says homing in on the people who are behind most of the shoplifting is key.

"We are working so hard with retailers, with the services, to create a portfolio of those individuals because you need that to take to the judges before they will even look at it," she says.

Despite the latest figures, Gloucestershire Police says it is bucking the national trend and charging more shoplifters than ever, working in conjunction with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to streamline prosecutions.

"There has been some really good work done by senior officers - and we have seen some really good results with this - and there is a direct correlation between that and the great charging rates we are getting at the moment," says Sgt James Harley.

But are police winning the war?

"I'd say we're making fantastic progress in the battle on retail crime," he says.

"It's one of my personal bugbears and that of my team and the whole constabulary.

"We've got individuals that go to work, they want to do their jobs and come home at the end of the day.

"Unfortunately they're being subjected to these individuals coming into their stores and putting them in really awkward positions so it's my personal battle as well - and that of my officers."

Nationally, data obtained by the BBC shows that just 270 people were connected to more than 28,000 shoplifting offences.

In Wiltshire more shoplifters were charged than anywhere else in the West.

The Avon and Somerset force area is the only one in the region that saw a fall in cases but it still has the highest number of offences per 1,000 people in the West.

The figures show shoplifting hotspots can be found at Cribbs Causeway and the Cabot Circus area of Bristol as well as Yeovil in Somerset.

In Wiltshire the hotspot is Trowbridge, where in the past year there were about 190 recorded incidents of shoplifting per 1,000 people, one of the highest rates in the whole country.

Local Neighbourhood Policing Sergeant Charly Chilton says she has seen it all, from low-level offenders to people with more than 100 convictions.

Like Ann in Gloucester, she says criminals are willing to turn violent when confronted.

"It's thankfully rare but what we do see occasionally is offenders who will offer violence, or threats of violence, when they are challenged," she says.

Sgt Chilton says the thefts can be very high value.

Recently two men visited one Wiltshire shop multiple times, stealing goods valued at more than £20,000.

So does Trowbridge deserve to be labelled a shoplifting hotspot?

"I don't think it's necessarily Trowbridge specifically," she says.

"I think nationally we are seeing an increase in shoplifting and that could be for any number of reasons."

What may be affecting the figures in the town is a recent push to encourage businesses to report crimes.

"While in no way are we seeing a true picture of the number of crimes that are being committed, we are seeing a much truer picture than perhaps some areas are because of that work," says Sgt Chilton.

There are local success stories.

In Warminster a CCTV network monitored by volunteers is giving police an extra edge, for example.

Shopkeepers are told not to take the law into their own hands but Dan Mercer, who runs the Waste Not Mont Not Emporium in Trowbridge, got so frustrated that he did just that.

A young man began coming into the emporium and, rather than buying items, he photographed them before returning to steal them.

Shop staff then found a Facebook profile advertising their stock for sale.

"One day I saw him [the shoplifter] walking down the street and I did actually run up and grab hold of him," Mercer says.

"I said 'look, we know it's you, we've got the photo evidence. If you go and get the stuff you've got now, I won't ring the police'."

The suspect denied it was him and later returned to the shop to confront Mercer.

"The police came and we showed them the photos.

"He was actually wearing the trousers... that he was when he was taking photos of our stuff," says Mercer.

"He had to admit it then and we actually got some of our stuff back."

But Mercer says he does not have the time to report every incident.

"If someone opens up a CD or nicks the game out of a case is it really worth me taking a half hour out of my day to report it?" he says.

"It's probably not."

In the battle against shoplifting, police in Somerset say they can rely on CCTV - their "eyes in the sky".

From a control room in Bridgwater more than 200 cameras watch over the county 24-7.

Like Gloucester's city protection officers, Jamie Lipton - who runs the CCTV room - knows the main offenders well.

"I was like, 'oh, there's such-and-such'," she says.

"They were like famous actors to me because I'd been watching them on screens."

Prolific shoplifter Nathan says he first stole from a shop when he was "11 or 12".

His first custodial sentence came when he was 14 and he is currently out on licence having been jailed nearly 20 times for almost 100 offences, he tells BBC Radio Bristol.

"You see all these people with nice things," he says.

"I didn't come from the richest of parents - it was a single mum with five kids situation."

Nathan, not his real name, says he was often able to take advantage of poor shop security.

"The security guard is either on his phone or not there and nobody cares," he says.

"It's not coming out of a person's pocket. Asda or Tesco's is a big worldwide thing."

Now in his 20s, Nathan says he intends to stop stealing, having seen the consequences and spent so much time behind bars.

His advice to businesses wanting to stop shoplifting is simple.

"Hire better security, people that actually do the job," he says.

"If you're a shopworker, you're not going to risk your life on a criminal that's trying to get away.

"It's not worth it, you don't get paid enough to do it."

Additional reporting by Ross Pollard and Steve Mellen