Croydon plans GPS tags for prolific shoplifters and town centre bans. There were 4,796 reported shop thefts in the centre last year. No funding or date yet.

Croydon Council wants persistent shoplifters fitted with GPS ankle tags and banned from parts of the town centre, under a pilot it says it is now researching with the police and technology suppliers. Executive Mayor Jason Perry set out the plan on 11 August, describing it as part of a “zero-tolerance” approach to crime and antisocial behaviour in his new term (Croydon Council).

The scale it is aimed at: 4,796 reported shop thefts in Croydon town centre over the past 12 months, against 5,043 the year before. That is a fall of 4.9%, and still more than 13 offences reported every day in one town centre.

What is actually being proposed, and what is not

On the council’s own account, this is at the research stage rather than a scheme with a start date. Croydon has met Sussex Police, which it says was the first force area in the country to pilot GPS tagging of prolific shoplifters, and is in discussion with the police and technology providers here. The council states plainly that “the funding and the enforcement of the technology is still being explored as part of the research”.

That matters, because a council cannot impose a tag by itself. Electronic monitoring is attached to a court order or a licence condition, so any Croydon scheme depends on the police, the courts and the probation service, not on a decision at the Town Hall. No timetable, cost or number of offenders has been published.

What the council has already done is narrower and real. It secured a borough-wide injunction against one man whose repeated antisocial behaviour affected businesses and residents around West Croydon, with a power of arrest attached if he breaches it. It has also put accredited Parkguard patrol officers into antisocial behaviour hotspots across the borough this summer, and runs a Town Centre Taskforce bringing together the council, businesses, police, youth and homelessness services.

What shopkeepers say

Benedict Selvaratnam, managing director of Freshfields Market and co-founder of the Croydon Business Association, told the council he would support the idea, and made the point that the loss is not mainly the stock.

“It is not simply the financial value of the goods being stolen,” he said. “There is also the cost of additional security, and the pressure it puts on staff, and morale. Persistent offenders make staff feel unsafe at work, and many businesses feel frustrated when the same individuals return repeatedly.”

He added a condition that is easy to miss in the announcement: businesses want real consequences for persistent shoplifting “while of course ensuring measures are proportionate and properly managed”.

What it means for you

If you run a shop in the borough, the practical route in is the Town Centre Taskforce and the Croydon Business Association rather than this pilot, which has no date. Thefts should still be reported to the police individually even when nothing appears to come of a single incident, because the 4,796 figure above is built from those reports and it is the number the council is using to argue its case. An unreported theft is invisible to it.

If you are a resident, the honest summary is that a fall of 4.9% in a year is real but modest, and that nothing about the town centre changes because of this announcement. Judge it when a pilot, a cost and a start date are published.

One caution on the language. Tagging and exclusion zones apply to people who have been convicted or made subject to a court order. An arrest is not a conviction, and a “prolific offender” in a press release is a person a court has to have dealt with first. We will report the scheme when there is a decision to report, not before.

For the day-to-day town centre picture, our roadworks and travel page covers current closures, parking in Croydon has the tariffs, and our planning applications page tracks what is being proposed for the shopping streets themselves.