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03
Aug 2024
Shoplifting among ‘biggest challenges’ facing Harrogate businesses
Shoplifting is among the “biggest challenges” facing traders, says a Harrogate business group.
Matthew Chapman, manager at Harrogate Business Improvement District, said business owners had also lost trust in reporting crimes.
It comes as councillors told David Skaith, Labour Mayor of York and North Yorkshire, that shoplifting had been “effectively decriminalised” in North Yorkshire because police don't investigate it.
According to North Yorkshire Police statistics, 557 reports of shoplifting were made to the force in the Harrogate town policing area in the last 12 months.
The Stray Ferret investigated the impact of crime on retailers in Harrogate as part of our Trading Hell series of articles this year, which revealed an increase in retail theft and shocking reports of threats to staff on a routine basis.
Mr Chapman said shoplifting and threats to staff were among the biggest challenges facing businesses in the town centre.
He added that the BID had recently appointed a town centre support officer in an effort to deter criminals.
Mr Chapman said:
Shoplifting and threats to staff are some of the biggest challenges to retail businesses in Harrogate at the moment. But, it could be seen as a doubled edged sword due to a loss of trust in reporting crimes as figures show shoplifting to be a low priority on the police agenda in our area.
As Harrogate BID, we have employed our Town Centre Support Officer (TCSO) to not only act as a deterrent to criminals, but also as encouragement for businesses to report through methods including the Police.UK app.
On meeting the new Mayor York and North Yorkshire David Skaith in July, we were very pleased to hear that anti-social behaviour and crime were very high on his agenda as it seems to be a common theme across the county.
The one thing we would ask people to focus on is reporting, no matter how small the crime is.
At a North Yorkshire police, fire and crime panel last week, Jo Coles, deputy mayor for policing and crime, admitted that the issue was a “huge problem” which had fallen off the agenda.
She told councillors:
It kind of fell off the agenda over the last couple of years. The impact on businesses of a period of austerity combined with the cost of living crisis and then a lack of response on certain callouts at certain types of crime and the expectation that people will just report things to their insurance companies and that kind of covers it actually means people are getting away with it when they shouldn’t be getting away with it.
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