The Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire has said that the government wants to see more police across UK towns and high streets in a bid to tackle rising retail crime.

Minister Diana Johnson told a select group of media that £200m will be spent on neighbourhood policing in addition to 3,000 extra police officers and police community support officers across 500 towns in the UK.

Speaking to Retail Week, Johnson said: “We want to see police in our communities and on our high streets.

“This is a deterrent effect, it’s about the police presence and officers will be talking to shop owners and retailers to build up a relationship that’s important. They can find out who are the prolific offenders in communities? Who do they already know who might go from one store to the next?”

She explained that neighbourhood policing is something she is focussing on this summer, along with working with councils to find out what activities there are for young people to do.

While many retailers have complained that police often don’t turn up to reported incidents of crime occurring in stores, Johnson assured that this will change.

“In the past, the neighbourhood police presence has been depleted and they’ve been sent off to respond to other issues,” she says.

“We’re saying we want a commitment, and police forces want to do this because (neighbourhood policing) is the bedrock of British policing.”

Johnson spoke at an event at Mitie’s intelligence security operations centre in Northampton, informing media, retailers and other businesses about a new initiative on retail crime, dubbed “tackling retail crime together”.

The strategy was initially announced by the home secretary as part of the Safer Streets Summer Initiative earlier this month, with a host of retailers backing the initiative.

The strategy forms the new blueprint for the delivery of a better, safer, growing, retail sector, with this set to be launched soon.

At the event, Johnson also slammed her predecessor and conservative MP Chris Philp, who suggested that individual citizens could act as a deterrent to retail crime back in October 2023.

“When asked about the rising level of shop theft and lack of police officer response, he went on to suggest the answers might be for members of the public to perform their own citizen’s arrest instead,” she said.

“I’m not going to make that mistake.”

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