OpenCrime

Worst areas for shoplifting

City of London in Greater London has the highest recorded rate of shoplifting of the 314 local authority areas in England and Wales with a full year of data: 112.1 per 1,000 residents in the year to June 2026, against 7.7 nationally. It has 15,111 residents and 92,154 people in it on a working day, so that rate divides a city centre's crime by a village's population. Measured against the people actually there on a weekday, Hartlepool comes top instead. On the resident measure, Westminster, Hartlepool and Kensington and Chelsea come next. The 100 highest are listed below.

112.1 shoplifting per 1,000 residents in City of London, the highest of 314 areas
7.7 per 1,000 across England and Wales
-2.3% national change on the previous 12 months
8.5% of all recorded crime is shoplifting

This ranks recorded crime, not danger. A high position means the police recorded more shoplifting per resident, which is not the same as a place being more dangerous to be in. Somewhere people report readily looks worse than somewhere people do not, and a district that fills with visitors carries their crime against the few who live there.

The 100 worst areas for shoplifting

Ranked by recorded offences per 1,000 residents over the 12 months to June 2026, across 314 local authority areas: cities, towns and rural districts alike.

# Area County Per 1,000 Per 1,000 workday Offences Year on year Share of its crime
1 City of London Greater London 112.1 18.4 1,694 +4.1% 17.0%
2 Westminster Greater London 42.3 24.2 8,883 +24.0% 10.0%
3 Hartlepool County Durham 23.4 26.2 2,297 -1.4% 14.4%
4 Kensington and Chelsea Greater London 22.6 17.6 3,261 +18.8% 12.6%
5 Lincoln Lincolnshire 21.9 21.4 2,302 -5.5% 14.1%
6 Eastbourne East Sussex 21.4 21.9 2,230 -18.2% 15.7%
7 Dartford Kent 21.2 22.0 2,653 +24.0% 19.4%
8 Stockton-on-Tees County Durham 20.3 21.3 4,206 +115.3% 14.6%
9 Hastings East Sussex 19.1 19.6 1,746 +47.7% 13.7%
10 Camden Greater London 18.4 13.9 3,990 +1.9% 8.4%
11 Middlesbrough North Yorkshire 17.9 18.8 2,792 +36.7% 9.6%
12 Islington Greater London 17.4 16.6 3,890 +14.3% 9.6%
13 Nottingham Nottinghamshire 17.3 16.5 5,730 +1.5% 11.2%
14 North East Lincolnshire Lincolnshire 17.1 17.5 2,733 +44.5% 12.5%
15 Reading Berkshire 16.8 17.6 3,074 +14.7% 15.0%
16 Norwich Norfolk 16.8 16.4 2,470 -2.7% 13.4%
17 Cambridge Cambridgeshire 16.7 14.8 2,489 -12.0% 15.1%
18 Brighton and Hove East Sussex 16.6 16.8 4,708 -8.3% 13.5%
19 Ipswich Suffolk 16.5 16.7 2,320 +62.8% 16.6%
20 Canterbury Kent 15.8 16.0 2,558 +16.8% 14.4%
21 Worthing West Sussex 15.3 15.8 1,747 -1.2% 15.5%
22 Crawley West Sussex 14.8 14.9 1,832 +2.1% 11.4%
23 Hammersmith and Fulham Greater London 14.4 13.5 2,725 +24.5% 10.3%
24 Newcastle upon Tyne Tyne and Wear 14.4 14.3 4,619 -4.7% 11.9%
25 Kingston upon Hull East Riding of Yorkshire 13.9 14.4 3,840 +15.2% 10.1%
26 Southampton Hampshire 13.7 14.6 3,550 +2.4% 10.5%
27 Redcar and Cleveland North Yorkshire 13.6 14.9 1,895 -0.2% 9.9%
28 Solihull West Midlands 13.4 12.9 2,960 +4.9% 15.5%
29 Portsmouth Hampshire 13.4 13.4 2,865 -2.1% 10.8%
30 Worcester Worcestershire 12.9 13.2 1,377 -0.4% 11.7%
31 Cardiff South Glamorgan 12.8 12.9 4,902 -8.2% 11.9%
32 Oxford Oxfordshire 12.7 11.7 2,115 -22.2% 12.0%
33 South Tyneside Tyne and Wear 12.5 13.8 1,898 -25.1% 11.9%
34 Bristol Bristol 12.5 12.7 6,188 +1.5% 8.5%
35 Burnley Lancashire 12.5 13.0 1,235 +38.8% 8.8%
36 Doncaster South Yorkshire 12.1 12.7 3,878 +18.6% 9.2%
37 Newport Gwent 12.1 12.6 2,027 -5.7% 9.1%
38 Sunderland Tyne and Wear 12.0 12.5 3,454 +2.0% 11.9%
39 Mansfield Nottinghamshire 11.9 13.3 1,351 -11.8% 10.3%
40 Leeds West Yorkshire 11.9 12.1 10,069 -5.5% 9.4%
41 North Tyneside Tyne and Wear 11.9 12.7 2,556 +0.5% 13.2%
42 County Durham County Durham 11.8 12.7 6,371 +9.3% 10.1%
43 Wolverhampton West Midlands 11.8 12.8 3,310 -2.2% 12.0%
44 Broxtowe Nottinghamshire 11.7 12.8 1,343 -2.2% 14.8%
45 Southend-on-Sea Essex 11.5 12.0 2,137 +26.8% 10.3%
46 Scarborough North Yorkshire 11.3 11.6 1,251 +17.0% 9.2%
47 Walsall West Midlands 11.3 12.2 3,331 -18.7% 11.1%
48 Darlington County Durham 11.2 11.5 1,258 +7.6% 9.1%
49 Newham Greater London 11.1 12.6 4,172 -12.0% 8.2%
50 Gateshead Tyne and Wear 11.1 11.3 2,257 -1.6% 11.3%
51 Bassetlaw Nottinghamshire 11.1 11.9 1,389 -6.5% 11.7%
52 Lambeth Greater London 11.1 10.9 3,521 +15.9% 7.3%
53 Ashfield Nottinghamshire 11.1 11.4 1,434 -13.6% 11.1%
54 Boston Lincolnshire 10.9 11.3 772 -12.9% 9.7%
55 Sheffield South Yorkshire 10.8 11.1 6,312 -5.7% 9.6%
56 Derby Derbyshire 10.7 11.0 2,945 +7.9% 8.1%
57 Birmingham West Midlands 10.7 10.8 12,627 -3.8% 8.7%
58 Tower Hamlets Greater London 10.7 10.5 3,541 +36.8% 7.3%
59 Exeter Devon 10.6 9.9 1,471 -43.4% 9.8%
60 Rotherham South Yorkshire 10.6 11.3 2,938 +48.5% 9.6%
61 Thurrock Essex 10.6 11.1 1,917 -10.3% 10.7%
62 Milton Keynes Buckinghamshire 10.5 10.8 3,225 +2.2% 10.4%
63 Liverpool Merseyside 10.5 10.5 5,327 +14.8% 7.7%
64 Lewisham Greater London 10.3 11.2 3,092 +43.1% 8.4%
65 Merthyr Tydfil Mid Glamorgan 10.2 10.3 603 -18.3% 9.5%
66 York North Yorkshire 10.1 10.1 2,115 -16.8% 11.1%
67 Hillingdon Greater London 10.0 10.1 3,289 +14.1% 8.3%
68 Peterborough Cambridgeshire 10.0 10.1 2,234 +5.0% 8.0%
69 Nuneaton and Bedworth Warwickshire 9.8 11.2 1,390 +12.5% 9.1%
70 Wrexham Clwyd 9.6 9.9 1,333 +14.8% 9.6%
71 Arun West Sussex 9.6 10.7 1,633 -2.4% 11.0%
72 Hackney Greater London 9.6 9.9 2,561 +13.7% 6.5%
73 Bath and North East Somerset Somerset 9.6 9.7 1,914 -12.0% 10.8%
74 Southwark Greater London 9.6 9.5 3,014 -22.0% 6.2%
75 Coventry West Midlands 9.6 10.4 3,523 -4.8% 10.0%
76 North Lincolnshire Lincolnshire 9.6 9.5 1,637 +24.0% 10.1%
77 Brentwood Essex 9.5 9.8 757 -0.8% 12.8%
78 Broxbourne Hertfordshire 9.5 10.4 967 +4.4% 10.0%
79 Stevenage Hertfordshire 9.5 9.6 870 +17.9% 8.2%
80 Haringey Greater London 9.5 10.2 2,499 +6.6% 7.1%
81 Sandwell West Midlands 9.4 10.0 3,335 +8.5% 9.3%
82 Chesterfield Derbyshire 9.4 9.2 998 -0.4% 7.9%
83 Warwick Warwickshire 9.2 9.0 1,431 +65.6% 11.0%
84 Torbay Devon 9.2 9.4 1,285 +0.5% 8.4%
85 Erewash Derbyshire 9.2 10.0 1,047 +5.3% 10.1%
86 Greenwich Greater London 9.1 9.9 2,732 +2.8% 8.0%
87 Torfaen Gwent 9.1 9.4 857 +10.7% 7.4%
88 Kingston upon Thames Greater London 9.1 9.3 1,563 -2.7% 10.4%
89 Newark and Sherwood Nottinghamshire 9.0 9.3 1,146 -24.9% 10.7%
90 Sedgemoor Somerset 9.0 9.6 1,168 -4.2% 8.2%
91 Hounslow Greater London 8.9 9.6 2,662 -1.8% 8.0%
92 Stoke-on-Trent Staffordshire 8.9 9.2 2,404 -10.1% 6.4%
93 Vale of Glamorgan South Glamorgan 8.8 9.3 1,192 +1.8% 12.3%
94 Dudley West Midlands 8.8 9.4 2,909 -12.1% 11.0%
95 Leicester Leicestershire 8.7 9.0 3,369 -13.0% 7.1%
96 Brent Greater London 8.6 9.3 3,040 -11.9% 7.0%
97 Denbighshire Clwyd 8.6 8.6 843 -13.7% 7.7%
98 Somerset West and Taunton Somerset 8.6 8.6 1,399 -3.7% 9.2%
99 Thanet Kent 8.6 9.0 1,224 -3.1% 7.4%
100 Telford and Wrekin Shropshire 8.5 8.9 1,669 -8.4% 9.6%

The table stops at 100, by which point the rate has fallen from 112.1 per 1,000 to 8.5. The other 214 areas carry the same figure for shoplifting on their own pages: search for a place by name, or see all 314 areas ranked by overall crime.

The first rate divides recorded offences by resident population, which is what the Office for National Statistics publishes. The second divides the same offences by the Census 2021 working-day population, which counts the people who are actually there on a weekday rather than the ones who sleep there. In this top ten, City of London and Westminster each fall by more than a third once the same offences are divided by the working-day population instead of the resident one, which is the signature of a place that fills up by day and empties at night.

The last column is this category's share of all crime recorded in that same area. A high rate with an ordinary share is a busy place; a high rate with an unusually high share is a place with a particular problem, and the two are worth telling apart.

What counts as shoplifting

The Home Office publishes this as a single category, Shoplifting, covering theft from shops and stalls. It concentrates where the shops are, which is why retail districts sit at the top whatever their residents do. It is what most people mean by retail theft.

Across England and Wales, police recorded 478,172 of them in the year to June 2026: 8.5% of all recorded crime, 2.3% down on the year before.

Areas are local authority districts, the level England and Wales actually publishes boundaries and populations for. A further 16 districts are left out because their police force has not filed a full year of returns; shown with a partial year, they would sit near the bottom of the table looking safe. How the figures work sets out the method, data sources lists where the numbers come from.

Where each offence peaks

City of London tops 8 of the 13 categories, and between them the 13 are led by only 5 different areas. That is what dividing by residents does: a place whose daytime crowds dwarf the people who live there wins almost everything, whatever the offence. Ordered by how much of all recorded crime each one accounts for, so the largest categories come first.

Offence Led by Rate there England and Wales Share of all crime
Violence City of London 100.3 32.4 35.5%
Anti-social behaviour Westminster 64.5 14.5 15.9%
Shoplifting (this page) City of London 112.1 7.7 8.5%
Criminal damage Middlesbrough 20.0 6.5 7.1%
Public order City of London 43.2 6.3 6.9%
Other theft City of London 160.3 6.0 6.6%
Vehicle crime Kensington and Chelsea 14.6 4.7 5.1%
Burglary City of London 31.6 3.3 3.7%
Drug offences City of London 31.7 3.2 3.5%
Theft from the person Westminster 89.0 1.6 1.8%
Robbery City of London 20.4 1.3 1.4%
Weapons Crawley 6.1 0.9 1.0%
Bicycle theft City of London 23.0 0.8 0.9%

Rates are per 1,000 residents over the 12 months to June 2026, across the same 314 areas. For crime as a whole rather than one category, see highest crime rates and safest places to live.