On April 29, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 received Royal Assent in the UK.
Part 3 is the retail section. It ends the rule that treated shop theft of £200 or less as a summary-only offense. It creates a standalone offense of assaulting a retail worker. And it makes a criminal behavior order mandatory for most adults convicted of that assault.
Retail groups called it landmark legislation. The Prime Minister had promised to end what he called a shoplifting free-for-all.
As of this week, none of those three provisions is in force. Three commencement orders have been made since June. Part 3 is in none of them. The government's position is that it will commence "at the appropriate time."
This edition is about what happened in the six months between the law passing and the law starting, and what Scotland, five years ahead, says about what comes next.
The numbers moved without it
The Office for National Statistics publishes police-recorded shoplifting every quarter. The trend turned before the law was even passed:
Year to March 2025: 530,324 offenses, the highest since current recording began in 2003.
Year to December 2025: 509,566, down 1%.
Year to March 2026: 507,086, down 4% from the record.
The charge rate moved too. Home Office outcomes data shows 23.2% of shoplifting offenses resulted in a charge or summons in the year to March 2026, up from 18.5% the year before. The share closed with no suspect identified fell from 55.3% to 52.7%.
Retailers saw the same direction. The BRC's 2026 Crime Report, covering the year to August 2025, put violence and abuse at 1,600 incidents a day, down from 2,000. Co-op reported retail crime across its estate down 21% in 2025, and physical attacks on colleagues down 31%.
None of that can be credited to Part 3. It did not exist when the data was collected.
What Co-op credits instead
Co-op's own explanation is worth reading closely, because it is a large-estate retailer that published both the result and what it believes caused it.
It credits three things: investment in security technology, higher police attendance following the national Retail Crime Action Plan, and 20 partnerships with local police forces to share intelligence and target persistent offenders.
Not one of the three is a statute.
The Retail Crime Action Plan, agreed by police chiefs in October 2023, did not change a single law. It changed what police committed to attend: incidents involving violence, incidents where an offender is detained, and cases where evidence must be collected in person. A police dip sample of 1,500 incidents, cited by the government in Parliament, found attendance of 76% where a suspect was detained.
That is an operating agreement, and the charge rate rose on its watch. The law that followed has not moved anything yet, because it has not started.
Scotland ran the experiment first
Scotland created a standalone offense of assaulting, threatening or abusing a retail worker in August 2021. It is broader than the English version, which covers assault only. It carries up to 12 months.
Five years of Scottish recorded crime since then:
2021-22: 22,913 shoplifting crimes.
2023-24: 38,674.
2025-26: 53,369, the highest level since 1971 and 86% above 2016-17.
Recorded common assaults of retail workers under the new offense rose from 1,650 in 2022-23 to 2,555 in 2023-24.
Some of that is reporting. A new offense gives staff and police a box to tick that did not exist before. But it is impossible to read five years of Scottish data and conclude that a retail-specific statute, on its own, bent the curve.
A perspective from the field
Our industry lobbies for laws because a law is a visible win. You can put it in a press release and an annual report.
What changed outcomes in Britain was a police commitment to show up, and retailers organized enough to hand them a case when they did. That is unglamorous work. It does not need a vote in Parliament, and nobody gets to cut a ribbon. It is also the only thing in this data set with a measurable effect.
Why this matters on your side of the Atlantic
Edition #17 asked what American retailers got for years of new state ORC laws, and found almost no evidence either way. Britain answers the question the US cannot, because it publishes the denominator every quarter.
The answer is uncomfortable for the advocacy agenda. The measurable gains arrived through attendance, case quality and police partnerships. The statute arrived after the gains, and has yet to be switched on.
The next ONS release lands this Thursday, October 22, covering the year to June 2026. Part 3 will not be in it either.
Three practical moves for the next 90 days
Separate your legislative and operational asks. For every law your company is lobbying for, write down the operating agreement with police that would deliver the same outcome without a vote. Then ask which one you are actually resourcing.
Track your case-to-charge ratio, not your arrest count. The UK's shift from 18.5% to 23.2% is the single most useful number in this edition. You can build the equivalent from your own case files and prosecutor outcomes in a quarter.
Pick three police partnerships, not thirty. Co-op's model was 20 local partnerships across a national estate. Start with the three jurisdictions where your repeat-offender incidents concentrate, and measure attendance before and after.
Closing note
Britain did the thing this industry keeps asking Washington and state capitals to do. Then it waited, and the improvement arrived first through the less visible channel.
When Part 3 does start, it may well help. A mandatory behavior order is a real tool. But the order of events matters, and it should change where you spend your next year of advocacy.
If you operate in the UK and have measured police attendance before and after the Retail Crime Action Plan, I would like to see it. Reply with anything you can share, anonymized always.
Forward this to one LP or AP leader who should be reading it.
— Gabriel
Sources: UK Government, Crime and Policing Act 2026 collection (Royal Assent April 29, 2026) · legislation.gov.uk, Crime and Policing Act 2026 Part 3 and commencement regulations SI 2026/689, 939, 960 · ONS, Crime in England and Wales, years ending March 2025, December 2025 and March 2026 · Home Office, Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2025 to 2026 (July 23, 2026) · BRC, Crime Report 2026 (February 24, 2026) · Co-op, press release (April 29, 2026) · NPCC, Retail Crime Action Plan (October 2023) · Scottish Government, Recorded Crime in Scotland 2023-24 and 2025-26.
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