by business editor Trevor Sturgess

Police have been urged to take retail crime more seriously after revelations that it cost businesses more than a billion pounds last year, with a shop theft nearly every minute.

The British Retail Consortium Retail Crime Survey 2009, published today, (7) found that retail crime nationally has surged during recession. Violence and abuse against shop staff doubled in the same period.

It is estimated that two thirds of customer thefts go unreported, pushing up the number of shoplifting incidents to more than a million.

Retail crime of all types cost UK shops £1.1 billion in 2008/09 - a 10 per cent increase on the previous year. Retailers also suffered from fraud and criminal damage.

Stealing by customers accounts for the biggest share of all retail crime both by the number of incidents (94 per cent) and by monetary value (42 per cent).

Physical violence against shop staff rose 58 per cent and verbal abuse by 37 per cent. At least 22,000 employees suffered threats, physical or verbal attacks.

BRC director-general Stephen Robertson described the statistics as shocking and called for tougher sentencing.

"The police and criminal justice system must take retail theft more seriously. There's been some progress but, with a fifth of retailers saying they don't report crime because they have no confidence in the police and two thirds of shop thefts going unreported, not enough."

The BRC recommends more police focus on tackling serious and organised crime against businesses, more effective engagement between police and local shops, and policing plans to include local retailers' own experiences of business crime.

Alan Dann, from Kent Police Partnerships and Crime Reduction department, insisted the force did not underestimate the impact of crime on businesses of all kinds. Since 2001, it had worked with the business community to create a network of Business Crime Reduction Partnerships throughout Kent.

'We now have 15 partnerships covering 43 trading locations who employ around 20 Partnership Managers working with Police and other agencies to reduce crime against businesses," he said.

'The emphasis is to deter criminals and troublemakers before they enter retail or licensed premises. This is achieved by sharing information and photographs of known active offenders, a radio scheme monitored by the CCTV control room to share real time intelligence and information and, in extreme cases, the service of exclusion notices on offenders by the partnership."

Kent Police said their figures showed shoplifting decreased by 6.2 per cent between April and December 2009.