United Kingdom: retail sector bosses urge government to legislate to protect staff from abuse

Amid a sharp increase in violence against shop staff during the Covid-19 pandemic, 65 bosses from the UK retail sector have penned a letter to the country’s prime minister to demand the creation of a new statutory offence – that of assaulting, threatening or abusing a retail worker. The business leaders write in the letter, which was sent on 4 February, that creating a specific statutory offence would allow this increasingly recurring issue to be dealt with more seriously. As the letter highlights, such legislation has already been enacted in Scotland, through the Protection of Workers Bill. “No one should go to work fearing for their safety,” says Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium and the first signatory of the letter. Other business leaders to feature among the signatories include the heads of supermarket chains Aldi, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Marks & Spencer and Lidl, those of Starbucks UK, KFC UK and McDonald’s Restaurants, as well as the chiefs of retailers Ikea UK, L’Occitane UK & Ireland, JD Sports and Primark. The UK’s Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers is also a signatory of the letter to the UK government. In March last year, the BRC’s annual crime survey reported that over 400 incidents of violence or abuse were occurring daily. Since then, the situation has worsened, with 100% of shops observing an increase in verbal abuse and two thirds seeing a rise in physical abuse.