Asda has taken further steps to tackle retail crime, rolling out Auror’s crime reporting and intelligence platform across its UK store estate.

The Auror platform consolidates information on crimes committed in-store, enabling faster identification of repeat offenders and security incident reporting. By unifying crime data into a single source, it allows retailers to focus resources on tackling the most prolific offenders.

Unifying data to speed up crime detection & prevention

David Lepley, Chief Operating Officer at Asda, said that “rolling out Auror will further strengthen our ability to prevent and tackle retail crime.”

The deployment comes after a successful 30-store trial in London, where CCTV footage relating to incidents and theft was reviewed by specially trained colleagues before being uploaded to the platform. This was then combined with wider reports to support investigations and prevent crime.

The pilot saw a 55% increase in prevention rates and helped recover £100k worth of goods that would otherwise have been stolen. It also allowed Asda’s colleagues to identify repeat offenders more effectively.

“The results from our London pilot demonstrate the value of having a faster and more effective way to report incidents and identify repeat offenders,” Lepley added.

“By working more closely with police and retailers through a shared intelligence network, we can focus our efforts where they will have the greatest impact.”

“It’s fantastic to see retailers like Asda unite to take a stand against the top 10% of offenders causing 70% of retail crime and take back UK’s High Streets,” Mark Gleeson, GM UK and Europe at Auror, commented. 

Responding to rising levels of retail crime

The rollout comes amid stubbornly high levels of retail crime and violence affecting UK shop workers and retail businesses.

The British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) Annual Crime Survey found that retail staff faced an average of 1,600 incidents of abuse or violence per day in 2025. Meanwhile, separate research from SAI showed that 61% of shoppers had noticed more incidents of crime in-store in the last 12 months.  

Asda said that just last year its colleagues experienced over 1,400 assaults – an average of four per day.

In response, the grocer has invested over £90million in the last two years on a range of security measures, including body worn cameras, improved CCTV and security barriers. It also piloted facial recognition technology (FRT) across its Manchester stores last year to explore how this might improve in-store safety and loss prevention.

Liz Evans, Chief Commercial Officer at Asda, said it was “consistently looking for new ways to improve the security in stores”, adding the trial was designed to help it “understand if FRT can reduce the number of incidents and provide greater protection to everybody in-store.”