Pledge
“Neighbourhood policing teams will crack down on shop theft, street theft and assaults against retail workers, so local people can take back their streets from thugs and thieves.”
Our verdict
We don’t yet have data showing how the level of theft and robbery incidents has changed since the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee was launched.
In April 2025 the government introduced its Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee (NPG), as promised in both its 2024 election manifesto and its subsequent Plan for Change, published in December 2024.
The NPG performance framework, published in April 2025, consists of five ‘pillars’ based on the aims set out in the Plan for Change, each of which we’re monitoring separately.
The fifth pillar, “Safer town centres”, pledged: “Neighbourhood policing teams will crack down on shop theft, street theft and assaults against retail workers, so local people can take back their streets from thugs and thieves.”
The framework set out two “headline” measures against which progress on this pillar will be publicly monitored:
The specific crimes included in these measures are: shop theft (shoplifting); robbery of business property; theft from the person; robbery of personal property; and assault on retail workers, the latter of which is set to become a new standalone crime under the Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently progressing through Parliament.
We’ve asked the Home Office what it considers a “successful/positive” outcome (that is, whether this only includes charges/summons, or also includes other outcomes such as diversionary, educational or intervention activity).
The framework also committed to producing a “dashboard” showing progress on these and other headline measures—we’ve also asked the Home Office when this will be live.
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We’re currently rating this pledge as “wait and see” as we don’t yet have data showing how the measures the government is using to track progress towards this pledge have changed since the NPG was introduced, and it’s not entirely clear what the Home Office considers a successful/positive outcome.
Police recorded crime outcomes data for the year ending March 2025 showed 19.8% of recorded shoplifting incidents during that period resulted in a charge or summons, as did 17.4% of recorded incidents of robbery of business property, 6.9% of robbery of personal property and 0.9% of theft from the person.
Over the same period, the total number of incidents recorded by the police were as follows:
The Office for National Statistics says that CSEW data is the best source of information on trends in theft. These figures show that in the year ending March 2025 there were 467,000 incidents of theft from the person, of which 92,000 were “snatch thefts” (like phone-grabbing), 153,000 “stealth thefts” (like pick-pocketing) and 222,000 “attempted snatch or steal thefts”.
As we develop this Government Tracker we’re keen to hear your feedback. We’ll be keeping the Tracker up to date and adding more pledges in the coming months.
Progress displayed publicly—so every single person in this country can judge our performance on actions, not words.
Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister – 24 September 2024