Joint with Trafford, the city is fifth highest in our region
20:59, 11 May 2026
Market Street in Manchester (Image: Manchester Evening News)
Manchester and Trafford have the fifth highest shoplifting crime rates in the North West, new figures show.
Shoplifting plummeted across Greater Manchester last year, but the area remains gripped by a retail theft epidemic which has been steadily rising since the pandemic.
Police in Greater Manchester recorded almost 16,000 shoplifting crimes in 2022, but that figure jumped by more than 2,300 offences the following year, and by more than 3,600 offences again in 2024.
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Last year, the picture looked much brighter, with shoplifting falling by 11% across Greater Manchester, with 2,397 fewer offences than the previous year.
However, that was still 23% higher than in 2022, the first full year after lockdown, and 13% higher than in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
In Greater Manchester, Oldham and Bolton saw the biggest reduction in retail theft, with shoplifting falling by 25% in both areas.Last year, shoplifting was most prevalent in Manchester, where police recorded 4,773 crimes, and Trafford, with 1,943 incidents. And it was those two areas which had the highest crime rates for shoplifting offences.
Crime rates are calculated by dividing the number of offences by the population, and are generally considered the fairest way to compare crime across areas of wildly different sizes. They show that, in both areas, the crime rate was eight shoplifting offences per 1,000 residents.
The Trafford Centre(Image: monkeybusinessimages via Getty Images)
While that was much lower than in some parts of the country, it was the joint fifth-highest crime rate in the North West. You can use our map to check the shoplifting crime rates in your area and compare them to the rest of the country.
Shoplifting was first described as an “epidemic” in 2023 by Dame Sharon White, the chair of John Lewis Partnership, and since then, crime—and the cost to retailers—has spiralled.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said retailers footed an “eye-watering” £4.2 billion bill from crime in 2024, including £2.2bn lost to shoplifting, and £1.8bn spent on crime prevention measures.
Meanwhile, analysis from the Lb-Debs shows that just one in five shoplifting offences (20%) resulted in a charge last year.However, last month, the Crime and Policing Bill became law.
The Bill has removed the £200 “low-value” threshold, meaning theft of goods below that value is no longer a summary-only offence dealt with by magistrates, which created a perception that many shoplifters were getting off lightly. The Bill has also created a new standalone offence of assaulting a retail worker.
Andrew Goodacre, CEO of Bira (the British Independent Retailers Association), said: “We need to recognise that real progress has been made over the past 12 months.
“There has been a better response from police, more arrests, more community officers on the ground, and a much sharper focus on retail crime. That matters, and it should be acknowledged.
“However, the level of crime remains high and unacceptable. Half a million shoplifting offences in a single year is not a figure any of us should be satisfied with. We have to maintain focus and momentum, and we would urge every retailer to remain vigilant and to report every single incident.
“That reporting culture is what drives the data, and the data is what drives the political will to act.”