H&M has become the latest retailer to give its UK staff body cameras as shops grapple with shoplifting and attacks on workers.
The Swedish fashion giant told The Mail on Sunday it was conducting trials of the technology.
It follows other household names Tesco, the Co-op and Lidl, which are providing staff with bodycams to protect them from abuse and assaults.
High street firms say the move has been forced on them due to a police failure to act. Shoplifting was up one-fifth last year, with violent and abusive incidents running at 2,000 a day.
Criminals – often organised gangs – increasingly steal goods in full view of staff and shoppers, safe in the knowledge that there will be no consequences.
Workers are usually told not to intervene against thieves to avoid the risk of being attacked.
Protection: H&M has become the latest retailer to give its UK staff body cameras as shops grapple with shoplifting and attacks on workers
Staff have also reported being sworn at, being subjected to racial and sexual insults, physically threatened, spat on and being victims of physical violence. The H&M bodycam trials are taking place at a store in Edinburgh as well as shops in Wood Green and Beckton in London.
A spokesman for the firm said: ‘We’re testing this new technology in a three-store pilot to assess what beneficial impact it may have, along with proper staff customer service training, on de-escalating and reducing incidents for the safety of both our colleagues and customers.’
The cameras are clipped onto a worker’s clothes and can record distressing situations to help provide evidence to the police.
Companies are turning to a wide range of security measures as they face unprecedented levels of theft and violence against staff.
Chains including Tesco, Morrisons, Boots, Primark and Greggs said last week they would start submitting CCTV and photos of prolific shoplifters into a new database to be shared with police.
The hope is that the database, known as Auror and pioneered in New Zealand, will provide security guards with watchlists so they can bar entry to repeat offenders.
More goods are now being locked in anti-theft devices, including basic foodstuffs such as honey-roast ham, pork, and mincemeat.
Greggs announced in May that it had moved some products behind the counter to reduce theft.
Shoplifting offences hit a record high in England and Wales last year, with 516,971 incidents recorded by police, up from 429,873 in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics. And there were £2.2billion of recorded store losses from theft, up from £1.8billion the previous year.
This was despite the industry investing £1.8billion into bolstering security, including the rollout of body cameras, panic buttons and CCTV.
The number of violent and abusive incidents hit more than 2,000 a day in the year to April 2024, according to industry group the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
In September 2023, Tesco boss Ken Murphy said every frontline worker at the supermarket chain would be offered a bodycam due to a rise in attacks.
Labour has promised to make assaults on shop staff a specific offence in England and Wales, as it is in Scotland, in the Crime and Policing Bill currently making its way through Parliament.
A clause states that anyone found guilty of assaulting a retail worker can be sentenced to up to six months in prison.
The MoS has led calls for a crackdown with its End The Shoplifting Epidemic campaign. Graham Wynn, assistant director of regulatory affairs at the BRC, said: ‘The police must get tougher on retail crime, ensuring that all incidents are attended to and followed up on, while the Government must ensure swift passage of the Bill to protect retail workers.’
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper also said last week that more police officers will be deployed to hundreds of towns across Britain this summer to clamp down on crime and anti-social behaviour.
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