UK forecourts offered enhanced reporting technology to combat crime

Forecourt Eye’s latest analysis shows that unpaid fuel incidents – including No Means of Payment declarations and drive-off thefts – are running 20% above the level recorded before the conflict in Iran began, subsequently leading to fuel prices rising sharply.

Based on a representative sample of 550 forecourts, the analysis recorded an average of 189 incidents per day in the five months following 28 February. That compares with 158 incidents per day in the preceding five months.

Extrapolated across all 8,350 UK forecourts, the figures suggest that daily incidents have risen from around 2,400 to approximately 2,872. The estimated volume of fuel involved has increased by 24% (from 87,800 litres to 108,900 litres per day), while its estimated daily value has risen by 48% (from around £131,000 to £194,000).

If sustained, the current rate would equate to approximately £70.7 million every year in unpaid fuel value. That’s around £22.9 million more than for the pre-conflict period and underlines the growing financial burden on forecourt operators as both incident levels and pump prices rise.

Alongside increasing fuel theft, forecourt operators are also continuing to report growing levels of abuse, intimidation and violence from frustrated customers, leaving staff on the front line of a broader rise in retail crime.

Partnership with Facewatch 

As an urgent response, Forecourt Eye has announced plans to expand its fuel crime prevention and debt recovery capabilities by partnering with Facewatch to offer a new crime management platform free of charge to more than 2,000 Forecourt Eye customers from the latter part of this year.

Forecourt Eye’s managing director Michelle Henchoz has explained that the move enables operators to manage fuel theft, shop crime and incident reporting to the police through one integrated system, with the option to join Facewatch’s established live facial recognition network, which is currently protecting thousands of retail stores across the UK.

Henchoz said: “Our customers have told us that they increasingly want one place to manage everything from unpaid fuel and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) intelligence through to shop theft, violence and police reporting. This partnership delivers exactly that, while also fitting seamlessly into the way in which they already work. As offending becomes more organised and more sophisticated, operators need joined-up technology that helps them to protect both the forecourt and the convenience store.”

Once viewed primarily as fuel filling stations, today’s forecourts are major convenience retailers employing thousands of front line staff. As those businesses have evolved, so too has the nature of the criminality they face, with fuel theft increasingly sitting alongside shop theft, violence and abuse as part of the same operational challenge.

Nick Fisher, CEO of Facewatch, commented: “The distinction between fuel crime and retail crime has largely disappeared. Modern forecourts face the same prolific offenders, violence and abuse experienced across the wider retail sector. By combining Forecourt Eye’s expertise on the forecourt with our own crime management capability, we’re giving operators a single platform to prevent crime, manage investigations and help the police service to tackle repeat and violent offenders.”

Fisher continued: “The new partnership also means that forecourts can consider accessing our live facial recognition technology to create a really powerful shield against all types of crime. That next step would enable the capability to instantly alert the police when the highest harm offenders are on the premises.”

New app in play

Forecourt operators already use Forecourt Eye’s tablet-based platform to manage incidents, including recovering payments from motorists who declare they have no means to pay and helping to prevent drive-offs through ANPR technology.

From September, Forecourt Eye customers will see a new app added to their existing tablet devices, providing direct access to Facewatch’s crime management platform and affording operators enhanced crime reporting and evidence management without changing the way in which they work.

Retailers will not need to deploy live facial recognition cameras in order to use the crime management platform.

Operators choosing to introduce Facewatch’s live facial recognition alongside Forecourt Eye’s ANPR technology will, for the first time, be able to combine vehicle recognition on the forecourt with facial recognition inside the store, thereby creating complementary layers of protection from the moment a vehicle arrives on-site until the customer leaves.

Growing numbers of Forecourt Eye’s customers are already adopting ANPR technology to identify known offending vehicles before incidents occur.

Combined with Facewatch’s live facial recognition capability, the partnership creates a joined-up approach towards protecting forecourts and their accompanying convenience stores.

Crime intelligence networks

The collaboration brings together two significant crime intelligence networks. Forecourt Eye maintains one of the UK’s largest private databases of vehicles linked to fuel theft, which now exceeds 300,000 registrations. Combined with Facewatch’s national database of known retail offenders, the partnership significantly expands the intelligence available to help identify prolific criminals operating across different sectors of the retail economy.

The move forms part of Facewatch’s wider strategy designed to build an integrated crime management ecosystem that starts with preventing crime before it happens, while supporting the national effort to tackle prolific offenders through intelligence sharing, incident reporting and police-ready evidence management under a single governance framework.

Gordon Balmer, executive director of the Petrol Retailers Association, has welcomed the announcement. “Today’s forecourts are dealing with far more than fuel theft,” affirmed Balmer. “Our members are reporting increasing levels of abuse and aggression towards colleagues who are simply doing their jobs and have no influence over the price displayed on the forecourt.”

Balmer went on to state: “Crime on Britain’s forecourts no longer begins and ends at the pump. Whether it’s unpaid fuel theft, shop theft, organised crime or unacceptable abuse of staff, operators need joined-up solutions that recognise how these issues increasingly overlap. Bringing together technologies that help retailers in preventing crime, managing incidents and supporting police investigations is a positive step forward for the industry.”