FROM ‘ORIS TO BORIS' - CROYDON IS NAMED CAPITAL FOR ‘OFF-THE-PEG'
FASHION FRAUD AS SURVEY FINDINGS ARE SENT TO MAYOR OF LONDON

London may be one of the fashion centres of the world, but one of its suburbs has been branded as Great Britain's fashion crime capital by some of the High Street's biggest names.

Croydon in South London is officially the worst location for stock loss or ‘shrinkage' caused by theft, according to the Retail Loss Prevention Fashion Forum.

Fashion is high on the shopping list of fraudsters who cost the UK economy £3 billion in 2007, according to the respected Global Retail Theft Barometer compiled by Professor Joshua Bamfield of the Centre for Retail Research.

Only Oxford Street in central London came higher than the SE19 borough, although Croydon beat Britain's premier shopping street for the number of times it appeared
in the lists of ‘hot' towns, according to figures compiled by the Fashion Forum which is comprised of the heads of loss prevention for most of the leading clothes brands on the High Street.

The Forum combined its data for 230 city and town centres, including those in Northern Ireland and Eire during a three month period. Each member fed its own ‘shrink' data to independent loss prevention specialists ORIS where the results were analysed to produce the league table representing Britain's ‘fraudscape'.

The initiative - which also put Canterbury in Kent as the lowest fraud spot in the survey
- is designed to provide joint evidence to the affected police forces in order to prioritise officer deployment. It is also aimed at helping the criminal justice system to take business crime more seriously as part of the Fashion Forum's pooling of best practice intelligence.

A similar initiative is being examined by the new Mayor of London Boris Johnson who
is already talking to senior police officers about US-style ‘crime mapping' in order to
deploy London officers more effectively.

The findings of the ORIS study are to be sent to Mayor of London after initial contact was made with Boris Johnson's office.

Croydon recorded more stock loss beating a number of major cities including Birmingham, Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester.

Andrew Wood, managing director of The ORIS Group which analysed the figures, said: "The data came in from the fashion retailers in different formats reflecting the different reporting procedures of each business. However there was a consistency in the findings when we analysed the data and apportioned points for crime hotspots in terms of loss and frequency that centres appeared in the lists of hot towns. Outside Oxford Street, Croydon scored highest in both categories while Canterbury scored lowest."

"This kind of analysis was a test to see whether a form of mapping could help retailers work together with police and Town Centre Partnerships to prioritise officer deployment where crime is high. We now hope to discuss this in more detail with the Mayor of London who we know is sympathetic to this approach."

© 2009 Retail Knowledge Ltd
Retail Knowledge