Home Affairs Committee

Oral evidence: The impact of serious and organised crime on local neighbourhoods, HC 36

Tuesday 16 June 2026

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 16 June 2026.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Dame Karen Bradley (Chair); Mr Paul Kohler; Ben Maguire; Margaret Mullane.

Questions 37-92

Witnesses

I: John Herriman, Chief Executive, Chartered Trading Standards Institute; Dennis Chalmers, Lead Officer for Serious and Organised Crime, Chartered Trading Standards Institute; Lee Ormandy, Lead Officer for Serious and Organised Crime, Chartered Trading Standards Institute.

II: Edward Woodall, Chief Executive, Association of Convenience Stores; Andrew Goodacre, CEO, British Independent Retail Association; Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor, Head of Opal, National Police Chiefs’ Council.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Dennis Chalmers, John Herriman and Lee Ormandy.

Q37        Chair: I welcome the first panel of this second evidence session of our inquiry on the role that serious and organised crime plays in neighbourhood crime. May I ask the panel to introduce themselves?

Dennis Chalmers: I am Dennis Chalmers, the CTSI lead officer for serious and organised crime.

Lee Ormandy: My name is Lee Ormandy. I am also a lead officer at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute for serious and organised crime.

John Herriman: I am John Herriman, the chief executive of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute.

Chair: Thank you. We have a number of questions, and we will start with Ben Maguire.

Q38        Ben Maguire: Thank you all for coming in and giving up your time to speak to us today. It is much appreciated. By way of background, what types of serious and organised crime linked to high street shops are you seeing?

Dennis Chalmers: What we are seeing seems to have increased in the last 10 years. It seems to be a lot more noticeable when officers are out. In a tobacco shop that we know from our intelligence is selling illicit goods, we are finding not just the illicit tobacco but the sorts of crime that are linked to it. We are finding under-age sales, modern slavery and money laundering. We are seeing that those crimes are linked to barbers, car washes and food takeaways—it is quite wide. Once they get in an area, they seem to buy up the area and take over, pushing legitimate businesses out. Legitimate businesses cannot really compete because they are paying wages and taxes that these businesses are not paying. We find that people might get £40 or £50 a day, so if they do 12 to 14 hours, they are being paid between £4 and £5 an hour. Legitimate businesses cannot compete with that.

Lee Ormandy: The trading standards crimes and offences that we are coming across on the high street have grown in scale. They have grown in sophistication, and they are now cross-border crime. They are exploiting trusted consumer environments, and they are targeting vulnerable people. Our mission, as trading standards, is to ensure a level playing field between consumers and businesses, and between businesses and businesses. These illegal premises on the high street are skewing that and putting legitimate businesses at a serious disadvantage. That is what we are coming across.

Organised crime on the high street is not just an urban issue; it has infiltrated our rural communities, villages and towns. It has become really widespread. It is a huge challenge for trading standards to police it as much as we would like. We are a very passionate service.

John Herriman: First of all, I should say that trading standards is here to create three things: the first is consumer confidence, the second is a level playing field, and both of those support the third, which is economic growth, particularly in the local context because trading standards is very much place-based.

In terms of the overall impacts, there is about a £12 billion impact UK-wide. Of that, £1 billion is linked to serious and organised crime and £1 billion is related to the high street. You have heard about those instances where we see it in vape shops, barber shops, nail bars, mini-markets and those types of things.

Over a 10 to 15-year period, there have been cutbacks in trading standards of about 50% in some areas. That has meant that serious and organised crime has been able to get not just a toehold but a foothold in the high street. That has a pervasive and pernicious impact on the high street. You have the individual consequences of consumers being able to get hold of dangerous, illegal products, such as vapes and illicit tobacco, and the consequences on legitimate businesses that are forced out, as you have just heard.

The other consequence is that it just rips the heart out of a local community. About a third of the public have reported that they feel less safe on their local high street. That has a significant impact on consumer confidence, the level playing field and economic growth.

Q39        Ben Maguire: I did not quite catch what you mentioned earlier. Was it that organised crime is worth £12 billion, £1 billion of which is on the high street?

John Herriman: That is right.

Q40        Ben Maguire: That is a staggering statistic. To follow up on that, you mentioned that trading standards is under-resourced. When a new business comes on to the high street, is there any kind of certification process or due diligence that takes place? With the best will in the world, trading standards, by definition, usually investigates after the business has been set up.

Given how many money laundering checks there are on personal bank accounts these days, it seems almost amazing that you can go in with a bag of cash, get a lease on a premises and set up a barber shop, or whatever it might be. Presumably trading standards goes in later if, as you highlighted, they have the resources. Is there no pre-check, licensing scheme or due diligence that happens before they set up an illegitimate business on the high street?

John Herriman: It will depend on the type of business. Lee would probably be best to answer that, as our lead on serious and organised crime.

Lee Ormandy: We are not a licensing authority. The licensing authority is the local district council, and certain types of premises, such as alcohol premises, are required to be licensed. At the moment, generic premises are not required to be licensed.

On how trading standards deals with that, we are very proactive and on the front foot. We put a lot of our scarce resources into business advice to ensure that legitimate businesses are doing the best they can, are complying with the law and are not inadvertently breaking it. The types of traders that we are talking about have no intention of complying with any legal obligations. Their intention is purely the gathering of money and the exploitation of vulnerable people and so on. They are not interested in the local community or in doing things properly. Again, that is so unfair to those legitimate businesses that are trying their hardest. It is just not competitive.

John Herriman: If I may make a related point, nationally, about 2,500 trading standards officers work in local authorities. That is not a huge number of people, and you are right that they are very much focused on market surveillance and enforcement activity, tending to when it goes wrong rather than the prevention bit at the front end.

As an example of other dimensions to this, Dennis may wish to comment on Cheetham Hill up in Manchester, which was a counterfeiting capital of not just the UK, but potentially Europe. An issue there was that the leaseholder or landlord of about 70% or 75% of the premises was the local authority, essentially. It is therefore really important that those checks are put in place right at the front end, to make sure that serious and organised crime does not have the opportunity to exploit those loopholes.

Q41        Ben Maguire: This is probably not something for this session, but it seems incredible when you think of the financing arrangements that would need to go into a lease on a new property and the legal obligations. We know that solicitors are bound by high standards from the SRA. It is amazing to think that these business premises just happen without any red warning light flashing on the dashboard.

Anyway, I will ask John about the CTSI research that identified hotspots across the UK, where organised crime is operating out of the shops we have already talked about. I think Lee mentioned that it is affecting rural areas as well; as a Cornish MP, I see it myself on my high streets and fore streets. Given that research, John, what do you think attracts organised crime to those hotspot areas, albeit we have heard that it is pretty widespread across the country in rural and urban settings?

John Herriman: I think it is the classic thing that will attract serious and organised crime, which is a gap. Essentially, if a gap exists, they will exploit it.

Q42        Ben Maguire: Is that a policing gap, a regulatory gap or—

John Herriman: It is a gap at a number of levels. It is not just trading standards that are the solution to this problem, but other agencies: the National Crime Agency, the police, environmental health and licensing. What we have seen—I can give you the stats for some of the regulatory services—because of fewer boots on the ground, essentially, is that the opportunity exists for serious and organised crime to step in, and it will not be spotted at that first step until it gets really bad, which is what happened in Cheetham Hill.

On the regulatory services, they have been cut over the past 10 to 15 years—these are National Audit Office figures—by about 23%. Trading standards has been cut by about 39%. That is double the hit that other regulatory services have had for various reasons, partly because we are not generating revenue in quite the same way that licensing is, for example. It is all those different elements. It is the Swiss cheese effect—if you get lots of holes, serious and organised crime will see them and will step in to exploit that opportunity. Whether we like it or not, serious and organised crime is really good at exploiting those opportunities.

Q43        Ben Maguire: Away from trading standards, might other bodies be enabling that kind of activity? I mentioned solicitors and others with professional bodies. Presumably serious and organised crime relies on those services, like everyone else does, to start a business, take on a lease and do everything else that is needed to open a barber shop, a vape shop or whatever it might be. Are there parts of the country where those mechanisms are weaker, less regulated or are enabling those groups?

John Herriman: I have not seen any particular evidence. I do not know whether Lee or Dennis have any particular examples of that, but you are right that gaps in the system get exploited. That is the problem.

Dennis Chalmers: What has also brought it on is the combination of what John said and the availability of empty shops on the high street. Since covid, I think that has speeded up. People’s shopping habits have changed, and we have seen a decline in the high street and the shops. Because there is so much availability of empty shops, we see crime exploiting it. When we see that, we try to put something in place to regenerate it, rather than having empty shops everywhere.

Lee Ormandy: On the back of that, today we are talking about the high street, but that is just one plate that trading standards is spinning. We have to deal with many other branches of organised crime simultaneously, and that includes scams, illegal goods, food fraud, supply chains and metrology, otherwise known as weights and measures, where someone ripping others off little by little builds up to a very large amount. If you think about it, how do you know the petrol pump is accurate when you are filling your car? Who checks that? Well, it is us, but we have to do that as well as deal with the high street and food fraud, so we are spinning a lot of plates with only 2,000 people nationally. It is a challenge.

Q44        Ben Maguire: Moving on, how do these illegitimate businesses try to conceal their illegal activities? You have already said that trading standards are spread really thin. They need to investigate it, but what kind of concealment is going on to hide these activities?

Dennis Chalmers: As you walk down the high street, you will see a shop that says, “Convenience Store”. You will notice that the window is always blocked and has signage on. That is part of it—so that you cannot look in to see what is going on. As you go in, it is as if someone has a blueprint, because it is exactly the same in every type of shop. I could go in anywhere in the country and they will sell cheap pop, crisps and things just to fill the shelf—Pot Noodles and all sorts of items.

Then there is the counter. Every time we go into a shop, we ask, “Who are you?”, and they say, “I don’t work here.” We say, “There’s no one else here,” and they say, “I don’t work here. I was just helping out for two hours.” We say, “Okay, who do you work for?”, and they say, “I don’t know his name.” That is what we are up against, and it is the same situation every time.

We are intelligence-led because we do not have many officers, so we will know that they are selling illegal products because we will have done test purchases beforehand. We will then look in the back and not be able to find the illicit goods they have. To give you an idea, you will have the counter at a sweet shop—I can send you pictures of them if you like—and there will be drugs paraphernalia, cannabis pipes and grinders mixed with the toys and sweets. To me, that is just not right. With all that cannabis paraphernalia, if children go into that shop to get a drink or anything, they will say, “With the sweets, I can get a crack pipe and a grinder.” I can send you the pictures to show what we come across every day.

Once we have gone into the back of the shop to try to find the illicit goods, it is not just someone who has hidden the cigarettes in their pocket or under the counter; these are sophisticated concealments. There is an actual operation, because we work in partnership with HMRC, called Operation Hide, which shows their sophistication. We have found concealments—we have to hire detection dogs for the day because the concealments are that good—and we had one that was concealed under a working toilet. If you found the button and pressed it, hydraulics would lift the toilet from the floor, and underneath would come all these illicit goods. It took hours and manpower to find that. I have found them in shower cubicles.

With the sophistication, there must be a team going round the country that fits them. This is organised; it is not just someone thinking, “Where can I put this next?” I think the charge is about £1,500 for these concealments, so that is the sort of sophistication. If we regularly hit the shops, they tend to spread the risk. They will hide suitcases full of tobacco in vehicles or people’s houses, because they know it is more difficult to go into a house. They share the risk, and it depends how much we visit the shop. They watch us and evolve all the time.

Lee Ormandy: Intel is also incredibly important. We get intel from partners, and we gain a lot of intel in person because we are the ones policing the high street, but what is perhaps most important is intel from the public. If somebody tells us that their daughter has been hanging around a vape shop and the owner has been giving them vapes, that is a huge red flag, and it enables us to target our resources at the premises that are causing most harm to that community.

Q45        Ben Maguire: You mentioned illicit goods. What kinds of things are you talking about? You mentioned cigarettes. Were illegal drugs also hidden in that case of the toilet system, for example?

Dennis Chalmers: We have had instances with our test purchasers. In one instance, they were only 19 and they went in to the test purchase and were offered cocaine and cannabis in the same sale.

Q46        Ben Maguire: And this is where the person was taken round the back of the shop and offered those goods.

Dennis Chalmers: Yes—it is round the back or, “Meet me over the street.” We also get nitrous oxide. You will tend to find lots of balloons in the shops, but you do not find the gas, because you put your order in and someone from down the street will bring it to you, again because they know that if we find it on the premises—it is quite bulky—we will seize it.

Lee Ormandy: There are also vapes that contain what is called spice, which is a synthetic cannabinoid that replicates THC but is a lot more potent and addictive. That is something we are also seeing. Children are unfortunately getting their hands on those vapes containing spice and are being hospitalised. It is not good.

John Herriman: I will make a related point, because it is probably worth saying that serious and organised criminals are returning to things like vapes and illicit tobacco because they can make more money from that than they can from drugs, for example. There are fewer consequences caused by illicit tobacco, vapes and so on compared with drugs. That is essentially why the market in that sort of area has gone up.

Q47        Ben Maguire: So it is not just a front?

John Herriman: It is essentially an illicit trade business.

Q48        Ben Maguire: If you suspect a business of being engaged in these types of criminal activity but it is not within the remit of trading standards—I am not quite clear where the boundary would be for where it goes beyond trading standards—what would you do at that point?

Dennis Chalmers: Most of these visits were conducted with partners. This cannot be tackled by one agency; we have to work together on it. We regularly go out with immigration, HMRC and police. HMRC does Op CeCe, which is national, and funds trading standards for some of this work. We work in partnership all the time.

Q49        Ben Maguire: So it is multi-agency, but you usually send an officer out first as a preliminary customer. I think you mentioned a test customer or—

Dennis Chalmers: A test purchase, yes.

John Herriman: Is it worth mentioning the thing you had at the start of the week—the ghost plates?

Dennis Chalmers: Yes. On a different, related matter, we came across something called ghost plates or stealth plates, which are raised number plates that are invisible to ANPR detection. While we had been dealing with a rogue trader, we came across them because we could not locate them on ANPR. We started looking into it from my authority. It was an area that no one was really doing anything about. It was not in our remit, but we took it upon ourselves to do it. We got national funding, and we have been all over. We funded a camera at a major airport. That has detected vehicles going to and from the airport that were not known and not coming up on the ANPR. We did an operation at the end of the week where a criminal who was linked to a murder was identified through this system. That shows how we work together. As trading standards officers, if someone will not do it, we want to know why and to do it.

Q50        Ben Maguire: Finally, when trading standards officers are going about their business, particularly before the multi-agency approach kicks in, are there risks involved to those agents? If so, how are they managed?

Lee Ormandy: Prior to any operation, they undergo risk assessments, but prior to a big collaborative operation—for example, a test purchase or something of that nature—it is all based on our intel, the intel from partners and all the information we can get on the target premise, and that goes through a risk assessment process. If the risk is too serious, we will not do it. As trading standards officers, unfortunately nowadays our standard uniform has a stab vest and body camera because that is how often we are encountering that sort of violence and being spat at and all sorts of things—not very pleasant.

John Herriman: It is something that we are significantly concerned about as the Trading Standards Institute, as you would imagine. A BBC report came out just a few weeks ago where we had two of our trading standards officers talking about the threats of violence and intimidation. One of them was a female trading standards officer who had received threats of sexual violence and intimidation. That individual was very brave going on national television on BBC News because they had not only been threatened in the workplace, but they had been followed home, their car had been rammed essentially just outside their driveway, and they had had to move as a result of that. When they moved, they had to have two separate removal companies so that they would not get followed. That is the level of threat that some people are exposed to.

Our concern is that with the rise of serious and organised crime, the threats have therefore increased. We had our conference last week up in Glasgow and I went to a presentation from the National Trading Standards intelligence team. They were highlighting the increased levels of threat. That is something that happened in the police many years ago. They had an incident where a police officer was tragically killed as a result. We very much see that as making sure that trading standards do not have that same moment, essentially.

Q51        Margaret Mullane: When you go on a raid, as you were just saying, where you have been given a tip-off and have done your investigation and you have to try to fund the dogs—this is what the police say to me when they go on operations—and you have only 2,500 trading standards officers, do you think it is a question of money and it needs to be invested in, without question?

John Herriman: Without question, yes. There has been some recent investment; there has been £6 million over three years as a result of the recent Home Office announcement. I think that will probably fund about 25 or 26 trading standards officers or related professionals. There was some additional investment from the DHSC a couple of years ago in relation to vapes. That will fund probably 150 trading standards officers. That will equate to about a 5% increase in the workforce overall.

To do the three things—maintain consumer confidence, ensure a level playing field and support local economic growth—we are saying that there needs to be a significant investment. To put it into context, consumer detriment is a survey that is done by the CMA. You may be familiar with the figures. When it reported last year, consumer detriment was running at £71 billion. Three years before that, consumer detriment was running at £54 billion. If you go back to 2014-15, consumer detriment was running at about £24 billion or £25 billion.

The next survey will report in two years’ time, in 2028. We are saying that it would require probably around a £90 million to £100 million investment nationally to get back to the levels of trading standards that we think would be effective. That would allow us to start tackling that consumer detriment, including the issues and impacts of serious and organised crime.

This is very much a boots on the ground issue. You need that physical presence—first, to provide the support to local premises. That is about pre-emptive action. If serious and organised crime know that trading standards and other regulatory professionals are monitoring that high street, they probably will not go close to it. Therefore, it has that preventive mechanism. If you do that, you get all the benefits that come with it, including a thriving high street. You may have personal perspectives on that.

Lee Ormandy: You are 100% correct. As well as not having enough officers to do the job effectively, we have the additional costs of the dogs. There is only a limited number of dogs, so we have to get in early and book them. There are also other costs like storage. Vapes have lithium batteries, so we cannot just store them in our normal secure store; they have to go into special explosive storage. We have to pay for that, and it is incredibly expensive. It is right because these things are explosive and can set fire to homes, but those are all additional costs that come out of trading standards.

Dennis Chalmers: We worked together on something in Greater Manchester. Cheetham Hill was the capital of Europe for counterfeiting goods. As an example, that was supported by £1.2 million of Government funding through the Proceeds of Crime Act. Overall, 206 criminal establishments were closed down and over 1,000 tonnes of counterfeit goods with a value of £1.56 billion were seized. It is always directed to organised crime; it also saw a 45% reduction in public order offences, a 69% reduction in vehicle crime, a 69% reduction in violent crime, a 58% reduction in burglary and a 50% reduction in theft. The police and law enforcement use something called a MoRiLE score, which is basically what level of impact you are having in that area. It was 858 when it first started in Cheetham Hill. After all that enforcement, it went down to zero.

Q52        Margaret Mullane: My question is about online shopping. Everybody worries about their high street and is not happy with how it is going, but everybody is online as well. What impact do you think that has had in the trade in illicit goods and the ability of all authorities to deal with it?

Lee Ormandy: Do you mean in comparison with the high street?

Margaret Mullane: Yes.

Lee Ormandy: Basically, organised crime, as I mentioned earlier, has infiltrated everything. It has infiltrated the high street. It has infiltrated people’s—

Q53        Margaret Mullane: Has being online enabled them more?

Lee Ormandy: To a certain extent, it has given them access to people’s private homes, because it is on their phones and computers. They have a false sense of security. They think, “That’s fine. I can respond to this or respond to that.” There is no doubt that organised criminals are taking advantage of that. It does not have to be transactional; it could be romance fraud, which is an evil scam that really takes advantage of the most vulnerable people. A similar one is clairvoyance scams. Basically, they will target people online. They are trying to legitimise what they are doing, just like on the high street, but it is a digital format.

The dangerous element of online is the social isolation and the vulnerability. By vulnerability, that can be temporary vulnerability, so a bereavement or a divorce. That could put somebody in a really bad frame of mind, whereby they will be susceptible to these cold call approaches. We are aware of it. We also monitor and police online social media, because things have moved on to social media now. The latest trend is in live, where they are broadcasting and selling things live. We are proactive and we do test purchases online, just the same as we would on the high street. We take action against those individuals who are taking advantage.

Q54        Margaret Mullane: Would that be public-driven? The public would say, “I’ve been scammed. I went to this clairvoyant online.” Is that how you would hear about it?

Lee Ormandy: That is one way. The other one could be the brand holder. If a brand holder is aware of somebody selling their product illegally, it will contact us. Again, it is intelligence. We also proactively surf the web. We are checking the tell-tale signs that we are trained in to identify those rogue websites and rogue email addresses.

Q55        Margaret Mullane: If a top brand contacts you—I like handbags, so let’s say it is handbags—would it help you to fund that going forward, because it is the loss of its brand?

Lee Ormandy: It would give us a statement to confirm the legitimacy of the product. We are defending its brand, but as trading standards, we are defending the public. We are defending the consumers who think they are getting a bargain and think, “This is fabulous.” It could be anything at all. As it is counterfeit, there are no quality standards. The thing might fall apart or it might have toxic paint on it and bring you out in a rash or something. It is very much a consumer protection focus.

Q56        Margaret Mullane: We had a presentation saying that, if the public can get a good football kit or a nice handbag that looks like the real thing, they are not aware of the terrible crime that is behind that. Do you think that is true?

Lee Ormandy: To a certain extent, yes. Everybody likes a bargain, but they do not appreciate that this is going on to fund drugs. We are talking international crime. A lot of this money not only leaves the local economy; it is also leaving the UK. That is not good for us, economics-wise.

Q57        Margaret Mullane: How are we going to tackle illicit goods online?

John Herriman: From an online marketplace perspective, we are seeing a proliferation of illicit and illegal goods coming in from the far east or wherever. We see that in the monitoring and test purchasing that happens in relation to online marketplaces. There is a consultation going on at the moment through the Office for Product Safety and Standards, which we are inputting into along with others.

The key here is making sure that online marketplaces are held accountable for the goods that are being sold through their platforms. At the moment, they are able to sidestep that issue by saying that it is the seller that is doing it and they are effectively a third-party retailer. That is one of the things that we want to see: greater accountability for online marketplaces, whichever one they happen to be. That could be an important step change that would have to go through legislation, or secondary legislation in relation to the Product Regulation and Metrology Act.

I was going to make the related point that whether these goods are illicit goods or dangerous goods, however they are coming into the country and whether people are getting them through online marketplaces or on the high street, they are coming through the same channels. They have to come through our ports and borders, so there is also a dimension to this about making sure that the ports and borders are better policed. Trading standards and other agencies are at the borders, but it is about making sure that there is the right level of intervention.

This was a couple of years ago, but it will illustrate the point I am trying to make: I popped up to Felixstowe, which is the largest container port in the UK—40% of the UK container trade comes through it, which is 4 million containers a year. That is an equivalent of the 20-feet containers, essentially. There is a trading standards team there that are funded by OPSS based in Suffolk, trading standards up in Ipswich, and through targeted inspections, a couple of years ago they were looking at about 500 of those containers.

When we were looking at the proliferation of vapes and illicit tobacco and everything else that was getting on to the high street, those were the channels they were able to come through, so we would like to see a greater level of protection at the ports and borders with the right level of funding. Part of the problem here—it is not about the EU exit or Brexit—is that when that happened, there were all those protections happening in the EU borders. Lots of that then came to the UK and we therefore did not have the same level of capacity that was there before. That is another key dimension to this.

Q58        Chair: John, I am curious about the platforms, because I had a constituency case of a local artist who trades under the brand FantasyWire. He makes beautiful statues that are in Trentham gardens and places like that, but he also sells commercially so you can buy them for yourself and make a little model of one of his—dandelions, fairies and things like that. Across all the social media platforms, there were photographs of his products, but when people went to buy them, they were not his products at all but very substandard, really quite dreadful products. That of course was giving him a bad name, because people were saying, “I’ve bought this FantasyWire thing and it’s not very good,” but it was also counterfeit goods coming in from the far east. I found dealing with the platforms impossible; they just did not want to take responsibility for what was on their sites.

John Herriman: Yes, and that is the fundamental issue through the consultation that is being raised—that is why the consultation is happening in that instance. It is really important that the platforms are held accountable. There are other things that can happen as well, and some of them have changed. For example, it was far too easy for companies that were based abroad to set themselves up and register with Companies House. They could then trade through the platforms, because that was the sign-off they needed. There was one example—I cannot remember the exact figures—I think in Wales or the south-west, where an individual at a residential address had thousands and thousands of letters arrive that were for all these companies that were effectively based abroad but had given that address to Companies House.

That loophole has been closed because new legislation was brought in, and the sense that you are getting is that it is a very layered approach that is going to tackle all these problems. What we are trying to articulate here is the role of trading standards, which probably punches above its weight in relation to what it is able to do. It is very much working in partnership with other agencies and lawmakers to make sure that we change the legislation as well.

Dennis Chalmers: One of the problems online that we are coming across is the rise in influencers. We are getting quite a few cases where influencers are promoting illegal goods. When we look into them and how many followers they have, it could be up to 2 million followers the individual is clearly promoting this illegal activity to. That is something else we are coming across quite regularly.

Chair: Very interesting. I call new granddad Paul Kohler.

Mr Kohler: Apologies for being late and missing the beginning, and apologies if you have answered these questions already.

Chair: He has just become a granddad again; that is why he is late. We give him permission to be late.

John Herriman: Congratulations.

Q59        Mr Kohler: Thank you. On the point of the legal regime, are there things you need to change in the law now? Are lawmakers listening to you, or are there things you need to happen?

Lee Ormandy: Currently, we have some powers, but those powers were designed for dealing with antisocial behaviour. They were not specifically designed for serious and organised crime. We are currently using them, but they are inadequate for us to make the most effective use of them.

One of the most effective tools is a closure order, which will close the premises there and then. That cuts off the revenue; it stops everything. Under the current legislation, we can only apply for a three-month closure. Then, if need be, we have to reapply for a three-month extension, but that is the maximum we can do. That period of time does not even dent organised crime. They will just sit it out. They will just go somewhere else. They will sell from a garage or another location and then move straight back in.

Following successful prosecutions, we may use a criminal behaviour order against a known individual. Again, that is not really effective because he will not go back, but a member of his gang will. They will just go back and start running it straightaway.

We put in some proposals that are in the report about extending closure orders to have a duration of 12 months, which we think will be more effective in not only cutting off the criminal proceeds, but giving the local community enough time to regenerate and for a legitimate business to move into the premises. We are very hopeful about the news that extending it to 12 months is going to consultation. That is really positive. We are really pleased with that.

Before we issue the closure order, we have to give a closure notice. Originally, that was only set for a couple of days. That has already been extended to 72 hours, which is very positive. If we issue a notice on a Friday afternoon, that gives us the ability to be in court on Monday. Under the current legislation, it would run out on Sunday, which is a bit of a nonsense. We have heard that that has been extended, which is really positive. We would like it to be extended further—to a week—given the busyness of the courts, because we have to go to court to get it signed off.

We do have some powers. We are using the powers as best we can, but to be more effective and to be able to really start eating into the organised crime that is embedded in our high streets, we need some legislative tweaks.

John Herriman: I want to highlight the effectiveness of closures when they happen. As an example, when one of the London boroughs, I think it was Camden, was able to close the shops—I think it closed 18 premises over a period of time—it was able to replace those with legitimate businesses and effectively rejuvenate that bit of the high street. It is really important to be able to take that action.

Q60        Mr Kohler: How do you get legitimate businesses there? What stops more illegitimate businesses going into those premises?

Lee Ormandy: We have many tools in our toolbox. We will use a closure order to shut a premises down. Some trading standards departments have access to financial investigators. That enables them to follow the money of the criminality and go right back to the gang, which is what we want, and actually deal with the money laundering elements. To a certain extent, that sometimes addresses the whack-a-mole way that, if we deal with something in Hampshire, they will just pop up in Surrey.

If we cut off all their financial supply chains—put account freezing orders on all their accounts so there is no money coming in or out—it not only causes them severe detriment, but in essence stops the criminality there and then, because they cannot make any money. For a premises that has been left or vacated, that then enables the local community and the local business partnership to promote that and to enable a legitimate business to move in. Once that starts, that community will start improving.

There is a statistic that says that currently, I think, a third of residents are reluctant to go into their high streets because of the fear of crime and the fear of antisocial behaviour. I say “fear of”—it is a perception, so that is why we are working hard to—

Q61        Mr Kohler: Do they see illegitimate businesses as crime? Of course, if people did not go into these businesses, they would not be there. What is the public’s attitude to these illegitimate businesses?

Lee Ormandy: To a certain extent, with some of the barbers, there will not be a lot of people going there. They are just fronts for money laundering. That is one of the tell-tale signs: you have these beautiful, fantastic premises but nobody is ever in. Nobody is ever using it, but that is fine because they are only using it to launder money. They are not reliant on footfall.

Q62        Mr Kohler: That is one type of illegitimate business.

Lee Ormandy: That is one type. The other is the type that is deliberately misleading people. That could be, say, a corner shop-type of establishment that is selling illegally imported food, so the food is not labelled correctly—there are no allergens or whatever. Not only are they obtaining a criminal benefit because they have brought it in illegally and cheaply and they are selling it on, but there is also the public health situation because there are no allergens and no ingredients labelled. That could cause a severe risk to public health. That is the same with vapes and illicit tobacco.

This is high profit, low risk—as they see it—with more profit than selling drugs or cocaine directly. They can get more money doing it this way, which is why they are investing and in essence buying up a row of shops. That is also why they are installing sophisticated remote-controlled false ceilings and false walls. That is a different level of sophistication from what we have seen previously on the high street.

John Herriman: There is also a cost of living crisis, so people are turning to cheaper goods. The issue is that there is a lack of awareness of the dangers of those illicit goods and the harms that sit behind them, in terms of human trafficking, modern slavery and child sexual exploitation. What we are also trying to do is raise awareness among the public of the fact that, when you buy that illicit tobacco or those illicit vapes, there may well be—are quite likely to be—dangerous chemicals in there. There are instances where illicit tobacco has been analysed and it has been found to have rat faeces in it.

You can start to raise awareness of those sorts of things—that that is what people are getting for that cheaper price. I think there is a big piece of work here to raise awareness among the public about what is happening and what it is they are sustaining. Then if you relate that to, let’s say, parents: “Do you want your child walking down a high street where you know there is modern slavery, human trafficking and child sexual exploitation going on?” Absolutely they won’t, so I think there is an important consumer messaging part to this as well.

Q63        Mr Kohler: We are talking about a PR campaign there, are we?

John Herriman: Yes.

Chair: I will just warn everyone that we have about 15 more minutes to get through our questions. I will bring in Ben to talk about co-ordination and co-operation.

Q64        Ben Maguire: I want to quickly follow up on Paul Kohler’s question first, if I may. Lee, you mentioned that when financial institutions freeze accounts, these businesses cannot operate any more. Do you find barriers to that happening? It seems incredible to me that we have these cash-intensive businesses, and I know lots of them use cards as well, given the regulations we have around the financial sector—I declare an interest in that I have worked for HSBC and City law firms in this area. How are those institutions not getting to grips with this? How are these illegitimate businesses able to wash so much money? I think, John, you mentioned that it is billions of pounds. How is that washing around and the financial institutions are not simply blocking the accounts to stop them engaging in this?

Lee Ormandy: There are money laundering regulations that all financial institutions must comply with. As far as trading standards is concerned, we are on the flip side of it. We are using account freezing orders to freeze the legitimate accounts that they have set up. I think you would need to speak to the banking sector.

Q65        Ben Maguire: But what issues have you found? You said earlier that you see a massive difference once those accounts are frozen in that they literally cannot engage in illicit activities any more. Where is the disconnect? Why is that not happening even before you get involved—and certainly once you do get involved and tell the banks what is happening?

Lee Ormandy: We have a really good relationship with the banks. In relation to rogue traders, which is another form of organised crime where builders are targeting people, we have a good relationship where we can highlight that a person is vulnerable. In relation to the account freezing orders, that is where our financial investigators are using powers to stop that known criminality. Once we have done that, it works effectively, shall I say, in cutting that off. That enables that account to be frozen while the investigation progresses, and we go to the proceeds of crime and look at confiscating their ill-gotten gains to make sure that crime does not pay. It is really powerful as a holding pen.

John Herriman: Essentially, these shop fronts are presenting themselves as legitimate businesses. Essentially, from an accounting point of view, the cash is flowing through, and it seems to be legitimate. It is only when you start going into the financial investigations that you start to unravel it and get underneath it. To do that, you must have the intelligence in the first place, because that then starts to give you the end of the ball of string. The issue is that they are very good at that money laundering process.

Dennis Chalmers: One of the problems is the lack of financial investigators. In the north-west, there are 22 authorities and we share them between us. We also have to pay for that service and sometimes we cannot afford to pay for the financial investigator to do it. If there were more financial investigators, I think you would get a lot more hits.

Q66        Ben Maguire: I know that lots of financial institutions invest heavily in financial investigators. I do not feel that it should be all on you to do that work at all.

John, you mentioned earlier there being a multi-agency approach to these big operations. I am keen to understand what barriers exist to the co-operation between trading standards officers and local police forces, national law enforcement and local government. We mentioned local authorities earlier when it comes to sharing information across regions about organised crime that is linked specifically to high street businesses.

John Herriman: First, trading standards is very good at partnership working. We have to be because we are so small. We sit at the centre of a lot of networks, whether that is the National Crime Agency, police or other regulatory services such as environmental health licensing. Partnership working absolutely sits at the centre of what we do. The barrier then becomes about capacity in terms of what we focus on and where we prioritise. That will be decided based on local political priorities or maybe national direction. There is that dimension.

I think there is also more that can be done, which we have talked about and which will hopefully be solved through the Home Office’s recent announcements around these high street organised crime units. That is about the role of intelligence. Trading standards works using something called the intelligence database, which also has connections to the police national database. That is an effective tool to log, track and do that analysis. It all comes together, but there is more that can be done in that space.

That is where the high street organised crime unit work funded by the Home Office comes in. There is £6 million going into trading standards for that, but there is another £24 million going into the National Crime Agency, police and others. That will start to provide greater levels of co-ordination.

There are no barriers in terms of organisations wanting to work with each other. I would say it is more down to capacity and the ability to co-ordinate some of that intelligence and make it work more effectively. I think we will see that through the pilots that the Home Office recently announced. You may have practical examples of that.

Dennis Chalmers: Yes, I can give an example from my own authority. Because of the historical problems we have had, we have set up a partnership enforcement team. That is a weekly meeting at the police station of all agencies: trading standards, housing, licensing, police, immigration. All the agencies are there.

We set up between us agreements for sharing the intelligence, and it is focusing on organised crime. It works because we sit there, share intelligence, and ask who is the problem and who we need to focus on. That focuses us because singly, as an agency, we cannot deal with it but together we can. We also get to see the bigger picture. Before, if we went into shops, we would not know the background of the people where we were going into.

When they do Op Machinize, which is the national one, the problem sometimes is that the big agencies do not understand what the other ones do. We learned in the partnership work that it took a couple of years to get everyone to understand how it works, what your powers are, what you can do and vice versa. Once you have got over that barrier, working together like this is the way to crack organised crime.

Q67        Chair: What role did you play in Operations Machinize and Vulcan?

Dennis Chalmers: Op Machinize is run by the NCA yearly. I was in the first one. Basically, it is targeted at high street shops, such as barbers or cash-rich car washes. As it came in, we saw it was very good but it was a one-off. We hit the street, showed them what we can do and then we went.

Op Vulcan was focused and targeted. It was relentless—hitting, hitting, hitting. It cleared the area. It showed the effect of constant funding and persistence. What they learned from that is what is called “Clear, Hold, Build”. You go into an area and it takes a while to clear it, then you have to hold it. “Build” is getting your partners and businesses involved to show, “Look what we’ve done. We’ve cleared the area.” It is about keeping up that persistence—do not let the focus shift once you have done it, or just go away. You need to keep it up.

Lee Ormandy: The powerful thing for me about Machinize is that it highlighted the power of collaboration with the different agencies. In just one month, there were 959 arrests, £10.7 million of illicit goods seized and 2.7 million illegal commodities destroyed. That is just in a month. That was a real eye-opener for some of our partners about what trading standards have been dealing with for quite a while. I would be really keen to promote that local organisational working. I am aware that in Surrey they have a serious organised crime partnership that has 42 local, regional and national partners. They all contribute to a different level of criminality. That is something that we need to promote. I do not think every area is fortunate enough to have such an organisation, but with Machinize it is going in the right direction.

Chair: Thank you. We are going to conclude with Paul Kohler who has questions about the impact that police reform might have on you.

Q68        Mr Kohler: Before I do that, may I quiz you on your argument? On the Vulcan argument, why are not articulating it in terms of, “This is how to grow the legitimate economy”? Everyone who comes before us always needs more money, and there is not much, as you will have noticed. Your argument surely should be, “Look this is what we can achieve. We can grow the economy by investing in trading standards.” Is there an argument there you are not exploiting enough?

John Herriman: Yes, and actually we did mention that before you came in.

Mr Kohler: Sorry.

John Herriman: Essentially, just to rearticulate it, I said that trading standards does three things: it supports consumer confidence, it ensures a level playing field and ultimately it drives local economic growth, and we are absolutely driving that.

However, you are absolutely right as well, in the sense that trading standards is not recognised for driving and supporting local economic growth, or economic growth. People tend to turn towards the CMA, who we work very closely with, but trading standards is pretty much doing that work at a local level. It is fundamentally important to local high streets that there is a level playing field, because that will then support local economic regeneration. Fundamentally, that is what we are saying is trading standards.

Trading standards sits at that interface between the public and a business essentially, so it absolutely supports businesses and drives local economic growth. That is good for consumers, because they get more choice and better prices. That is what trading standards is ultimately and that is why it was set up.

Q69        Mr Kohler: I read somewhere in our briefing papers that there are 75 organisations dealing with organised crime. Leadership is provided by the Home Office. Is that leadership good enough? Does it work?

Lee Ormandy: Serious and organised crime is the ultimate responsibility of the National Crime Agency. However, they have recognised, and it is in their strategic reviews, that collaboration is the key and that no single agency or department is capable of challenging organised crime. There has to be collaboration. That collaboration has been multi-agency, because each agency has a different set of powers and a different set of experience. Nationally, the fight against organised crime is led by the National Crime Agency.

John Herriman: Let me just say that the Home Office is responding and that we are working very closely with them, hence the recent announcements on the additional funding for the high street organised crime units. The key is that that is £6 million over three years for trading standards and £24 million for the other agencies, but it is how that gets sustained over the long term essentially, because it goes back to the “Clear, Hold, Build” point. We can do the “Clear” bit; you then have to “Hold” it and do the “Build” bit alongside it. That is why we are also asking for that reinvestment back into trading standards, because that will ensure that you can do the “Hold” part, which is the critical element.

Q70        Mr Kohler: My last question was going to be about the police. However, as I understood it, the National Crime Agency deals with the operational co-ordination and the Home Office leads on the policy aspects of that. I was trying to quiz you about whether you feel the Home Office is listening to you. Do you feel listened to by the Home Office?

John Herriman: I would say that we do recently, because with the report that we produced—“Hidden In Plain Sight”, which had all the hotspots—we were actively talking to the Home Office about it. To a degree, there was a level of co-ordination in the announcement last week, during our conference up in Glasgow. Actually, we had a day on serious and organised crime, and that is when the Home Office made its announcement around some of the further support for tackling serious and organised crime.

I think it is early days. I know that the Home Secretary has been up to Birmingham to look at some of the high streets up there and has been out on a couple of operations as well. What we are trying to ensure is that this is long-term, sustained funding, so that we can support that “Clear, Hold, Build” strategy, which is the key element.

There is probably one related point I should make, which is about the legislation. There is a difference in Scotland, because they do not have the closure orders and closure notices in quite the same way that we have down here in England. So, what we are also looking at and having conversations in Scotland about is the learning from England, to work out whether that should apply in Scotland, too. That is another active conversation that is going on at the moment, because we would then end up with an alignment essentially between trading standards.

Q71        Mr Kohler: Moving to the operational leadership, do you have a view on whether proposed changes to the policing structure in this country will improve co-ordination?

John Herriman: This is an active live conversation that we are having at the moment. We have not only got police reform; we have also got local Government reorganisation. You have got devolution. There are also conversations about structural change around trading standards in Scotland. It is a very live conversation.

There is also work going on in the FSA, because they are looking at where the boundary is between what they do nationally and what happens at the local level. There are also changes around construction products, so there are lots of moving parts to this at the moment.

My view on it, because police reform is another key element, is that if we took a strategic view—this is the critical point—what you would end up with potentially is lots of different agencies looking at things in isolation. The FSA will do their bit, the CMA will do their bit and the police will do their bit. However, we actually need a strategic view of how all those different elements align, and where we want to end up in four or five years’ time.

The thing that connects all the activity across all the different regulatory bodies and enforcement agencies is intelligence, and what we are potentially piloting with the high street organised crime units is a focus on intelligence. This is just me thinking aloud here—although this is a conversation that we are having internally—but is there an opportunity to take that learning as we look at police reform? It is about that close working relationship and partnership between trading standards, other regulatory agencies and the police and the National Crime Agency, because intelligence sits at the heart of targeting that operational activity. I think that might pose some fundamental questions that I think it is now the right time to ask.

My biggest concern about all this is that there is a risk of trading standards fragmenting, because of where they sit in relation to unitaries, or the first or second tier, so we would lose economies of scale and essentially the strategic perspective that trading standards operates really well at. That is the one thing that we are highlighting, and we are having those conversations with the Department for Business and Trade, and we will also be supporting those conversations into MHCLG. There is a real risk, but there is also a real opportunity here.

Q72        Mr Kohler: Is there a role for artificial intelligence in processing intelligence?

John Herriman: Absolutely.

Q73        Mr Kohler: Is that something you are looking at?

John Herriman: Not actively at the moment, but it is a question that we are asking as the professional body. We obviously do not have control over what goes on in local government, but we are promoting those questions on the role of artificial intelligence. At the moment, we are responding to artificial intelligence being used in criminality, such as fraud scams or whatever it might be, and that is huge. Yes, I think there are opportunities in artificial intelligence in relation to the operation, co-ordination and analysis.

Q74        Mr Kohler: But you cannot point to things that are actually happening at the moment.

John Herriman: Not actively at the moment, but we are asking the questions because we think those things need to be looked at.

Q75        Chair: What will the new £6 million that has been announced be spent on?

Dennis Chalmers: At the moment, the announcement has just been that the three police forces that we are aware of have been allocated these funds. As I understand it, when those police forces have accepted that they are doing that work, the trading standards will get their allocation and be notified that they are doing it.

What we are lacking is the intelligence and the analysts, because the police have their own analysts and team who do all this. We do not have that capability because we are so short, so it will be more intelligence. I would say that when we do all those operations—Op Machinize and the rest—we are one of the main agencies that it tends to be, because of our knowledge in the shops. We do the tobacco work, and we are leading on these operations. The NCA will organise and do them, but we are the ones leading on the ground, on the shopfloor. The police will support us, but we have the knowledge of the hides, who we are working with and the other agencies.

Chair: From the way you have described it, we can all picture our own high streets and the businesses that we have concerns about. I think that awareness for the public is really important on this. Thank you for your answers.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Edward Woodall, Andrew Goodacre and Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Taylor.

Q76        Chair: We resume with our second panel this afternoon. Gentlemen, would you like to introduce yourselves?

Detective Chief Superintendent Taylor: My name is Jim Taylor. I am the head of Opal, which is a national policing team for serious organised acquisitive crime.

Andrew Goodacre: I am Andrew Goodacre. I am chief executive of the British Independent Retailers Association, representing 4,500 to 5,000 members—everything from pet shops to department stores, but not grocery.

Edward Woodall: I am Ed Woodall. I am chief executive of the Association of Convenience Stores. We represent the UK’s 50,000 convenience retailers.

Q77        Ben Maguire: Thanks for coming in to speak to us today. My first question is to all of you. To what extent is retail crime linked to serious organised crime?

Edward Woodall: Retail crime is a huge issue for retailers in terms of shop theft, violence and abuse, and antisocial behaviour against staff. The link to organised crime happens at a number of different levels, depending on how you want to define organised crime.

At the very highest level, there are burglaries and robberies of sites that target cash and tobacco. That might look like targeting ATM machines, or gangs might be targeting tobacco to sell on. They will be very organised and they work across different police force areas. They are stealing tobacco in particular to redistribute it across different channels, and that will happen across different force areas. That is the highest level of organised crime. It does enough damage to stores to stop them trading in their neighbourhoods and communities, so it has a very visible impact.

When you shift down to organised criminality at shop theft level, there are two approaches. Typically, the shop theft that we see is committed by people who have addiction issues or housing issues. They will go from store to store, stealing goods in order to resell them. That will be very localised in a two to three-person crime wave. It is quite likely that those individuals are known to the police, the retailer and the community where they operate. It is very much a localised level.

Then there is a bit in the middle, which is organised shop theft. That is a bit more like organised looting. You will have shelves literally cleared of meat, alcohol or cheese—any high-value goods—on the basis that they are stealing to order for that product to be resold and disposed of through different channels. It might be done through dodgy shops, which was talked about during the previous panel, online or through their own individual networks. Of the highest-volume crime, there is a clear connection with organised criminal activity.

Andrew Goodacre: Just building on what Ed was saying, I think we have three types of crime: retail abuse, staff abuse and consumers. That is not really organised as such. Then there are the perpetrators of shop theft. We have seen a surge in the level of shop theft for the last three or four years. Generally, there is an acceptance that the surge is coming because people have become more organised. It is hard to say whether that is serious organised crime or whether people have become more aware of the opportunity that stealing from shops presents, but it is certainly seen. Largely, we think organised crime is behind that.

The two other areas that concern us are the illicit and illegitimate shops, which are definitely more organised. We are also seeing an increased threat from cyber, and cyber-crime tends be a bit more organised again in that respect. There is no doubt that the retail sector is very challenged by organised crime at different levels.

Detective Chief Superintendent Taylor: It is probably fair to say that until two years ago, policing understanding of organised retail crime was very thin, the reason being that retail crime was very much under-reported and local forces were not making the link between what was happening locally and then tracking those offenders nationally, which is what Ed talked about.

Opal hosts the organised retail crime intelligence team, which was put in place initially as a result of the Pegasus Partnership. It is a public-private partnership with retailers. That gave us an opportunity to have a foot-on-the-ball moment, as to what organised retail crime is and what it looks like. We know that if there is under-reporting to the police and we are only seeing 20% of the crimes, then we are not seeing 100% of the picture. The crime data and the incident data that sits in with retail and is not being reported to policing is as important as what is being reported.

In the last couple of years, the team has become much more adept at understanding what organised retail crime looks like. For the purposes of the Opal definition, it was high-impact commercial burglary or robbery committed by the same high-harm individual or a group across two or more police areas with sophistication and organised methodologies. We know that there were 550,000 incidents reported to policing in 2025. Of those incidents, 170,000 demonstrated those qualities, so we felt that there was probably around 30% to 35% coverage of organised retail crime.

Q78        Ben Maguire: You mentioned that the reporting of crimes has changed in recent years. Have you seen any major changes in trends or shifts over the last 10 years in these types of crimes? Given the questions we had last time, I am thinking particularly about the rise of online retail.

Detective Chief Superintendent Taylor: Probably. In the last couple of years since we have been looking at it, we have been pushing really hard. The National Business Crime Centre sits alongside us and has been working really hard with retailers to make sure that they tell policing, so that we understand it. We have now provided a capability for retailers to send their data directly into Opal. While that may not always be recorded, it is crime incidence, so it at least allows us to make those links. Obviously, we have seen an increase, as everybody would expect, but equally we were asking for that increase, because it is important that we understand the problem.

Q79        Ben Maguire: I am keen to ask about the impact of this type of retail crime on local communities, given your background with Wiltshire police and experience in the south-west, particularly in rural communities. Without getting political, there is less density of policing in rural towns and villages than there is somewhere like the streets of Westminster. I would be keen to hear about your experiences and your reflections on that.

Detective Chief Superintendent Taylor: I have been involved in serious and organised crime investigation for the majority of my policing career. What I can tell you is that it is local to regional to national to global—that is the reality. In a small county force like Wiltshire, for instance, while the volume may not be the same as for the Metropolitan police, the impact on local communities is significantly felt. A small shop—the type that Ed would represent—would feel a significant impact from, say, a £10,000 tobacco theft, which could potentially put it out of business, whereas a multinational may be able to accept that as part of its loss. It is equally damaging but not as significant to someone’s livelihood.

Q80        Ben Maguire: What happens to the goods that are stolen from shops generally? You mentioned that some of them are stolen to order, but is there any other destination for those goods?

Andrew Goodacre: From what our members tell us, car-boot sales often get mentioned but the bigger opportunity, and one of the drivers for the growth in this crime, is that it is far easier to dispose of the goods through money channels, especially online channels. There must be 50 marketplaces where people can sell an item that is pre-loved—remember, it is pre-stolen. I am not blaming the customers for buying it: it looks like a bargain, so why wouldn’t you buy it?

Some online marketplaces actually have sections for items to be sold, clothing for instance, with labels that are still intact. You are then asking yourself, “Why is the label still intact?” because if you did not like the item, surely you would take it back to the store you had bought it from. There is growing evidence, in my view, that online marketplaces—not knowingly; I think they become victims as well of the organised criminals—are being used as a very efficient way of disposing of a wider range of goods, which is why I think a wider range of businesses, nearly every business, feel like a target on the high street, and that is part of the problem.

Q81        Ben Maguire: So there is no specific type of goods. It could be clothing—you mentioned things with a high end fee?

Andrew Goodacre: It varies. Ed will talk about chocolate, I am sure, because that has been a real issue for them. It is toys. You will probably know Jellycat toys. One of our member directors has had to stop selling them because he was losing more than he was selling. The demand is there—customers want to buy them, but more customers want to steal them and then sell them online. That damages communities, obviously, because we are talking about small shops that service communities. Some of these shops will be post offices; some will be multi-service businesses and probably the only one offering those services within a 5-mile or 10-mile radius. That is a real challenge for rural communities: if you lose these businesses because they cannot make it work financially—that is not just theft; there are other reasons around that—communities will suffer as a result.

Q82        Margaret Mullane: I agree with Mr Woodall on the two different types of crime. There are local people who are affected by drugs who are going in and feeding their habit. The police come and arrest them, and the courts let them out the same day, so the shops are dealing with that. Following on from Ben’s statement, my seat is in east London, and the police are often abstracted and are not around. I would argue—not on the serious crime aspect but on low-level crime—that because the police are not there in the main when they are needed, serious crime then thinks, “Great!” I am working with one shop at the moment that, because of its unwillingness to act, is attracting a terrible element into the area, and the police are not there, so it just grows and grows. I do not think that that has been addressed by anything that has been said this afternoon. I do not know what you as Opal think of that. I say to the shop, “Why don’t you report it?” and they say, “Because nobody is really interested.” Noticing the patterns and following it up just does not happen.

Edward Woodall: You are right that if you talk to retailers, there is a real sense that they have lost confidence in the reporting mechanisms and the sense of there being a feedback loop. You are not expecting police to attend on every occasion, but you understand that that has gone into the system and they can join the dots. What we are missing is a big section of the crime in the middle. We have, obviously, Jim and Opal and Operation Pegasus doing a great job for travelling criminals, but for those prolific offenders who go store to store, we are not joining the dots at an operational policing level to address it.

One of the challenges for us as retailers is how we can share that information and report better. At the minute, the challenge is the systems are not as streamlined for us to be able to report that. Our request into policing is, “How do we streamline the system so we can get our data in so that you can then act on it?”. There is a huge gap. We estimate in our data that there are 5.8 million shop theft offences in the convenience sector alone. Police in England and Wales say there are 500,000, so we are miles apart. That is a big challenge for us to overcome, because if you get people reporting, you can join the dots and identify the organised crime.

Q83        Mr Kohler: How are shops addressing this issue? How are they changing what they are doing to address it?

Edward Woodall: They are investing significantly in stores to make them safer and more secure. We invest about £300 million a year across the convenience sector, which is about £6,000 per site. There are two ways in which those investments happen. First of all, it is about protecting colleagues, because people who are organised criminals stealing to order know that if they use violence, abuse and aggression towards staff, they will get away, so they will use that tactically in store. We had to make sure that we were protecting colleagues first. The first wave of investment has been around making colleagues feel connected. Headsets, body-worn cameras and remotely monitored CCTV will be regular features of convenience stores and any other stores you go into on the high street, to keep people safe.

Where we are seeing investment patterns change is around product protection. To prevent the clearing of shelves, we are having more shelf-edge risers, so that you can take one product at a time as opposed to taking them all out. We are seeing more extreme things: people putting products in boxes, including meat, or having a bell you have to press to get the staff to come and open up alcohol fridges.

The retailers are deploying those tactics to keep their colleagues and the store safe. That is really valued by customers. We poll them and say, “How do you feel about these measures being in store?” When they see that retailers are investing in these measures, it makes them feel safer in the store. We are absolutely trying to do that. The missing bit for us is the point we were just making around reporting. If we want to identify the organised criminals, who probably account for 80% of the volume of shop theft crime in stores, we have to be able to join the dots and identify them.

Andrew Goodacre: We asked that question of our members in our last survey, a few weeks ago. Most of our members are non-essential goods sellers—gift shops, homeware stores, hardware stores, bike shops and so on. Traditionally, a lot of retail theft has been focused on more essential items, like food, alcohol and cigarettes—those kinds of in-demand items. You could argue that the shop owners in our sectors are playing catch-up a bit.

The changes they have made have been around extra CCTV. The larger places are using body cams and walkie-talkies. You see shelves with dummy products: health stores selling vitamins and those kinds of items are putting out dummy products to combat the shelf sweeping that Edward was referring to. They are putting more of the higher-value items either in locked cases that a member of staff has to open or behind the counter.

I hear what Ed is saying. Customers want to be safe, and that is true enough, but there has to be a balance when people are using discretionary spend. You are looking for a better experience in spending the money. What our members told us in the last survey is that they are fearful about making the shopping experience less enjoyable, with people not being able to touch and feel everything they may want to touch and feel. That is a concern for the types of sellers who require that more sensory purchase, for want of a better phrase.

Q84        Mr Kohler: I want to be careful with this question, but over the decades have you not made it far easier to steal from shops, for instance through self-service tills?

Andrew Goodacre: I cannot think of one member that does self-service tills.

Q85        Mr Kohler: No, sorry—not to you, Andrew, but more to you, Edward. I was in a shop last night with my wife. We could find the door, but we could not find where to pay—that was someone hidden somewhere in the back. It would be so easy to steal from the bigger retailers. I know that in the last couple of years there have been security guards around suddenly, but was not the trend for a long while making it very easy, by assuming that people would play by the rules?

Edward Woodall: There is bigger investment in self-service tills as the retailing model changes, but with the monitoring of those through CCTV, it is still difficult to steal from them. If anything, it is harder. It is almost as if you have to go through more steps to steal through a self-service checkout.

Q86        Mr Kohler: But you do not see a figure of authority. When there is a human being at a till, there is a figure of authority there. You can walk around my local supermarket and not see a figure of authority at any point. I just wonder whether the psychology has caused you problems. I can imagine why it works as a business model—there are fewer staff to employ—but are you not sending out a subliminal message that it is a free-for-all?

Andrew Goodacre: I guess it might give an opportunity for the opportunist to steal, but not the committed perpetrators. The reality is that the people who steal most of the items go nowhere near a till, whether self-service or manned; they are just in and out. The till’s location or what type of till it is will not prevent them, because they are going nowhere near it. I think what you are talking about is whether you are giving a different perception of the value of your goods and whether they get stolen.

Q87        Mr Kohler: Is that a subliminal message? I just worry about that.

Andrew Goodacre: It is possible, but I am not sure that there is such a link with it, in fairness. As I say, among our members, I cannot think of one shop I have been in that has a self-service till, although I have not been in them all. To our members, bringing stuff to the counter is possibly your greatest protection in that respect.

Edward Woodall: There are also more features around the store; you will now have gated entries into stores that you would not have had, and you have one-way systems to get in and out. That includes self-service checkouts in stores that see the highest level of theft. You have to scan a receipt in order to get out and for the barriers to open.

In the context of this and organised criminality, these people are not going through the self-service checkout. They are clearing shelves and going straight out the door. They know what they are doing; they are not going through that route.

Q88        Margaret Mullane: What do you think has been the effect on businesses of the new offence of assaulting a retail worker? Do you think it will be a deterrent so that people will be less likely to assault some poor worker?

Edward Woodall: I really hope so. I think we have to keep communicating to everyone that there are tougher penalties for attacks on shop workers and make that very clear. We want to see the courts absolutely following through on that.

For a long time, the evidence has been clear that shop workers are at a point of vulnerability, because they are there on the frontline and essentially enforcing things—enforcing the law. If you are in a convenience store, you have to age-check people, and that is a big flashpoint. You have to deal with shop thieves, and that is a big flashpoint. You also have to refuse to serve people who are intoxicated. If they are enforcing the law, they need those protections.

We absolutely want to ensure that we are communicating this. I would say that it is very early days here, because we have only just had the Bill passed and we are still waiting for the implementation of parts of it, but the evidence in Scotland suggests that it will drive tougher offences, and hopefully courts will back that up.

Q89        Margaret Mullane: Do you think you need anything else to protect them?

Edward Woodall: I think the area around the criminal behaviour order is really interesting. Again, all of this comes back to, “Do we have the policing resource to back up the new measures?”

An example from one of my members is James Convenience, which operate a store in Derby bus station. They put in profit protection officers, because they had such a high level of theft, and within a week they had identified 34 different shop thieves operating out of that store, one of whom had a criminal behaviour order. What you do with that is call the police and say, “They have a criminal behaviour order.” The police were then not able to respond and say, “Okay. We will make sure that they do not come back in. We will come in, arrest them and take them in.”

This is about making sure that we are able to target these prolific offenders who are connected with organised crime and who use violence and abuse as a tactic when they are stealing. To do that, you need to use criminal behaviour orders, banning letters and things that stop them coming back in.

Andrew Goodacre: Let me build on that. The whole sector pushed for the crime to be recognised, including the unions, so it was a real combined effort.

Ed is right that CBOs are very important. I think the Bill also talks about respect orders. We are not hearing so much about those at the moment, but hopefully they will follow through, because they really do follow on. This is not just about theft or physical abuse; verbal abuse is involved as well.

Detective Chief Superintendent Taylor: Ed and Andrew are talking about the whole scope and some of the local, prolific offending, but from a serious and organised crime point of view, we are now taking a slightly different stance with the groups that we are identifying.

Before, if we were arresting individuals and putting them in front of a court for shoplifting, they would likely end up in a magistrates court and end up with a minimal sentence, if they got one at all. Now, the work that we are doing within Opal is about understanding the totality of the crime, understanding the organised crime group make-up and charging them with a conspiracy to steal. That immediately sends the case to the Crown court, which has greater sentencing powers.

We have seen that live in action with a group of individuals who over a period of two years were responsible for £2.5 million-worth of theft. They had 400 offences across 35 different forces, likely choking up the criminal justice system and with 50 different officers on the case. Due to Opal coming in now and seeing the totality of the crimes, those individuals received two-and-a-half years and three years in prison and were deported back to their home country. The next layer of that will be financial investigation to see what criminal assets we can take from them.

There is another element to that. We are now using powers that previously were set aside for drug investigations and firearms investigations—serious crime prevention orders. We have just secured our first serious crime prevention order on a retail organised crime group. That prevents their offending and limits their ability to commit those offences by restricting their bank accounts and their mobile telephone use. On top of that, there is financial investigation. We have account freezing orders that we are now using as a tactic to disrupt and displace the criminality.

The local CBOs and local convictions are great, but from an organised crime point of view, we are now treating this as a serious threat rather than just shop theft or shoplifting. That is perhaps what it was treated as years ago, but it is not; it is serious and organised crime.

Q90        Mr Kohler: Is that having an effect? Is it working?

Detective Chief Superintendent Taylor: It is absolutely working, yes. In the two years that Opal has focused on that, we have taken on 264 referrals. Whereas before we would have had to go to look for those offences and make the links, now shops can task us directly on a monthly basis, to say, “Look, this is an organised crime group impacting on us.”

Of the 86 groups that we have taken on, we have identified—well, in 36 operations this year, we have reduced their offending by 73%, of the groups that we have investigated. We have disrupted that level of criminality. In one case, as I said, we disrupted by almost 100%, a group that was responsible for £2.5 million-worth of theft over two years.

Q91        Mr Kohler: Is the problem getting worse?

Detective Chief Superintendent Taylor: It will continue. I do not think that it will be an overnight fix, but let us not forget that there are different cohorts for different offences. As two major retailers have said to us since they have been working with us, they have seen a distinct drop in organised criminality in their stores, which is great. For me, that feels like a benefit, because it is listening to our community, but you are right that, if offences are increasing, it might be because of the other cohort of offenders.

Q92        Mr Kohler: My question was to ask whether local police forces take retail crime seriously enough. Edward and Andrew have already answered that earlier, but what is your view of that, Jim?

Detective Chief Superintendent Taylor: We are getting better. I think there is some work to do. Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman, who leads the volume crime portfolio, put in place the retail crime action plan, which was a reset for policing to be a clear set of guidelines for what the police will and will not attend. Before, I think there were some mixed messages—police not attending below £200 threshold and so on—but as a result of the plan, I think that our attendance has increased. If you listen to some of the retailers, they will be happier with the policing response now. It will definitely make an impact over time, but I remind the Committee it has been in place for just over a year, and we need to see a longer-term spread of the results—[Interruption.]

Chair: I am sorry, but as you can hear, the Division bell is ringing. I understand that there might be multiple votes, so we have taken the decision that, rather than keeping you here waiting for what could be a significant period, we will close the session now. Perhaps we can come back to you in writing with other questions, or we might be able to invite you back in the autumn when I hope we will have business that goes on later than it is doing at the moment. I am afraid I will have to bring this to a conclusion.