A shop owner has described how she locks her door during opening hours and customers have to ring the bell to get in after her store was targeted by thieves last year.

Paige Mengers, who runs a designer boutique in Surrey, has been speaking about the impact of shoplifting, with recorded offences remaining above pre-pandemic levels.

Home Office figures show there were 42,674 shoplifting offences across Kent, Surrey and Sussex in 2025/26 compared with 28,048 cases in 2019/20.

The government said overall offences in England and Wales fell 4% last year, with more suspects being charged.

Mengers, who has stores in Cobham and south-west London, said she boosted security after a raid in January 2025 involving men with wire cutters.

"One barricaded the door, the other came in and cut the wires on the bags and stole quite a lot of them," she said.

"It was absolutely awful, I lost two very good members of staff who were terrified after that.

"We were really shaken and for about six months I had security on the doors for our staff."

The borough commander for Elmbridge Chris Thoday told BBC South East the tactics used by these groups were "pretty sophisticated".

"They're very organised, they know exactly what they are doing," he said.

"Quite often they will recce the shops beforehand, then go in afterwards, steal the items they want to take, to make sure they're in and out as quickly as possible."

Insp Thoday said a number of stores had since trialled the use of lone worker alarms for staff working alone at night in a number of shops in Cobham.

Businesses are sharing their experiences of shop theft as a BBC investigation reveals 270 people were connected to more than 28,000 offences across England.

Official data shows 23 per cent of investigations across England and Wales led to a charge or summons in the 12 months up to April this year.

It's not just high street stores being targeted, rural areas are also affected.

Bosses at a family-run farm shop in Wingham, near Canterbury in Kent, said they had suffered thousands of pounds of losses in a year.

"We're getting small gangs come in or individuals to steal high value goods, either meat products, meat joints or alcohol," said Andrew Gibson, director at Gibson's Farm Shop.

"They seem to be more organised, out here you have to drive here, you can't be an opportunist thief."

Gibson recently turned to social media to shame offenders online.

"We've had the situation where thieves have gone back into a police station with the money for the goods to pay back to us," he said.

In Canterbury, Kent Police have set up a dedicated retail crime team.

"People are going in, stealing to order, filling up trolleys and just running out of the stores," said James, a plain clothed police officer speaking to BBC South East during an operation to catch thieves.

He said crime groups would sometimes scope out stores and film items they wanted stolen, before sending shoplifters in.

"We notice people coming in checking out where the CCTV cameras are," he said.

"Sometimes a shoplifter will use trolleys, they'll load up what they want to take and then they'll hover by the entrance or exit and when the opportunity comes they just take the whole trolley load of goods.

"We've also noticed people with prams loading up the bottom or the top, wandering around pretending they are getting something out for the young child in the pram and then load up the pram and take items out of the store."

Paul Stoner, district commander for police in the city, said the team was set up as a response to a rise in crime over an 18-month period.

"It's a set few individuals who commit a disproportionate amount of that crime," he said.

"Our officers have a really good knowledge of the local offenders, we are able to identify them very quickly through the CCTV images," he said.

"What we also have is the ability to put those images through facial recognition, if the suspect is on a database, we're able to identify them."

Police also share information with the local City Watch scheme and details about known suspects can be relayed on a radio system to shops.

It's run by the Canterbury Business Improvement District (Bid) and links up retailers with the police and the city council's CCTV control centre.

Lisa Carlson, chief executive of Canterbury Bid, said they had a street team which trained businesses, helping them gather and submit evidence.

"We have 137 radios in circulation, if there is an incident unfolding it can be reported in real time and hopefully we can avoid any crime happening," she said.