Our shop doors are locked during opening hours after theft

A shop owner has described how she locks her door during opening hours and customers have to ring the bell to get in after her store was targeted by thieves last year.

Paige Mengers, who runs a designer boutique in Surrey, has been speaking about the impact of shoplifting, with recorded offences remaining above pre-pandemic levels.

Home Office figures show there were 42,674 shoplifting offences across Kent, Surrey and Sussex in 2025/26 compared with 28,048 cases in 2019/20.

The government said overall offences in England and Wales fell 4% last year, with more suspects being charged.

Mengers, who has stores in Cobham and south-west London, said she boosted security after a raid in January 2025 involving men with wire cutters.

"One barricaded the door, the other came in and cut the wires on the bags and stole quite a lot of them," she said.

"It was absolutely awful, I lost two very good members of staff who were terrified after that.

"We were really shaken and for about six months I had security on the doors for our staff."

The borough commander for Elmbridge Chris Thoday told BBC South East the tactics used by these groups were "pretty sophisticated".

"They're very organised, they know exactly what they are doing," he said.

"Quite often they will recce the shops beforehand, then go in afterwards, steal the items they want to take, to make sure they're in and out as quickly as possible."

Insp Thoday said a number of stores had since trialled the use of lone worker alarms for staff working alone at night in a number of shops in Cobham.

Businesses are sharing their experiences of shop theft as a BBC investigation reveals 270 people were connected to more than 28,000 offences across England.

Official data shows 23 per cent of investigations across England and Wales led to a charge or summons in the 12 months up to April this year.

It's not just high street stores being targeted, rural areas are also affected.

Bosses at a family-run farm shop in Wingham, near Canterbury in Kent, said they had suffered thousands of pounds of losses in a year.