Creating new offence would reduce shop crime, ACS tells Holyrood committee

The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) has voiced its support for the Scottish bill to protect shop workers.

In a submission to the Scottish Parliament Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee, the association said the creating of a new offence to deal with shop crime and increasing penalties for offenders would act as “a deterrent, reducing the levels of violence and abuse in the retail sector.”

“The general public is aware that assaulting a police officer or an emergency worker is a statutory offence which carries a tougher sentence than common assault and this could be equally effective in reducing in the levels of violence currently seen in the retail sector,” it said in the submission.

The Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Bill proposes a new statutory offence of assaulting, threatening, abusing, obstructing or hindering a retail worker and create a statutory aggravation to that offence where the retail worker is enforcing a statutory age restriction.

ACS has also asked for a communications campaign to ensure that the general public are aware of the new sanctions.

James Lowman, chief executive of the ACS, said: “It is completely unacceptable that retailers and their staff are experiencing incidents of violence and abuse simply while trying to do their job. These incidents can be deeply traumatic and can have long-lasting effects on both their professional and personal lives, with colleagues feeling too frightened to return to work after an incident has occurred.

“The introduction of a new statutory offence will help to support retailers in protecting their staff, particularly when they are enforcing age restrictions, sending a message to offenders that attacks on shopworkers will not be tolerated.”