UK convenience stores have recorded around 6.2 million incidents of shop theft over the past 12 months, according to new figures from the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS).

The organisation's 2025 Crime Report revealed another record level of theft committed against local shops, with the number rising from 5.6 million in the previous year.

The report also found that crime cost convenience retailers an estimated £316 million over the period.

A further £265 million has been spent by retailers on crime prevention and detection measures in their stores.

The ACS said that taken together, the cost of crime and investment in crime prevention amount to a 10p crime tax on every transaction in a convenience store.

Across the 12-month-period there were over 59,000 estimated incidents of violence in the convenience sector over the last year, and 1.2 million incidents of verbal abuse.

Amit Puntambekar, who runs a Nisa Local in Fenstanton, was attacked and injured when he attempted to challenge a thief and has been dealing with violent threats for months.

Speaking in the report, he said: ““When your staff are threatened with a hammer, when someone threatens to kill you who lives near your shop and the police don’t take it seriously, what’s the point?”

Ian Lewis, who runs a SPAR store in Minster Lovell, had his store targeted by two ram raid attacks in recent months, the second of which between Christmas and New Year where thieves ripped out the stores’ cash machine.

Speaking in the report, he said: “My business was ram raided by criminals in a Land Rover and the cash machine ripped out. My parents live above the shop, I will never forget the voicemail that I got from my parents when this happened.”

The report is published as the Crime and Policing Bill reaches Second Reading stage.

The Bill aims to introduce a separate offence for assaulting a shop worker, to scrap the £200 threshold for shop theft offences, and to increase police powers to deal with anti-social behaviour.

ACS has backed the Crime and Policing Bill as a long-overdue turning point on retail crime, and is urging everyone involved in the justice system, from local forces to Police and Crime Commissioners, to make tackling retail crime a priority this year.

“The levels of theft, abuse and violence experienced by retailers over the last year makes for shocking reading, but it will not surprise our members who are living it on a daily basis," said chief executive of the ACS James Lowman. "Criminals targeting local shops without fear of reproach cannot be allowed to continue, which is why we’re fully supportive of the Government’s Crime and Policing Bill."

Lowman added that while retailers and the police have made a positive difference, putting in place strategies that work to keep retailers and their colleagues safer, there needs to be "stronger legislation to back that up."

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