Barnet recorded 3,452 shoplifting offences in the year to September, up 14.8%. The Mayor and Met chief face Assembly questions on Thursday 5 November.
Barnet recorded 3,452 shoplifting offences in the 12 months to September 2026, up 14.8% on the year before and well ahead of London’s 3.8% rise, according to the Met’s monthly crime data.
The borough moved from 16th to 9th of London’s 32 boroughs for the number of offences. The figures land as the Mayor, Lord Khan of Tooting, and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, prepare to take questions on policing from the London Assembly at City Hall on Thursday 5 November from 10am.
The Assembly said members may raise shoplifting, gun crime, vehicle theft and Palantir. Its note gives London-wide numbers. We went to the Met data it cites to find Barnet’s.
Shoplifting: Barnet’s rise came earlier
The Assembly’s headline is that London’s shoplifting offences rose by about 37% between February and July 2026, “from 6,900 monthly offences in February, to 9,483 in July”. The Met’s latest refresh, dated 5 October, has revised those months slightly to 6,895 and 9,416, which is still a rise of about 37%.
February is a low point, though. The same comparison in 2025 showed a 19.3% rise, from 6,901 to 8,235. Comparing July with July, London is up 14.3%.
Barnet’s February-to-July comparison shows no rise: it recorded 297 offences in February 2026 and 293 in July. Its numbers were already high by February. That month’s 297 compares with 213 a year earlier, a rise of 39.4%.
Month by month from October 2025, Barnet’s count ran 268, 258, 294, 343, 297, 265, 232, 261, 349, 293, 286 and 306.
More of those offences are also ending in what the Met calls a positive outcome. Barnet recorded 1,116 positive outcomes for shoplifting in the 12 months to September, against 320 the year before. On the Met’s own calculation, outcomes divided by offences in the same period, that is 32.3%, up from 10.6%. London’s rate went from 8.7% to 17.2%. The data does not say why Barnet’s offences or outcomes moved, and more offences on the books can reflect more reporting by shops as well as more theft.
Where in Barnet
West Hendon has the highest ward count. Brunswick Park shows the sharpest rise, more than tripling from 72 to 238.
| Ward | Year to Sept 2025 | Year to Sept 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| West Hendon | 354 | 447 |
| Childs Hill | 362 | 306 |
| Hendon | 185 | 299 |
| Brunswick Park | 72 | 238 |
| Cricklewood | 125 | 231 |
| Burnt Oak | 114 | 221 |
Treat the ward changes with some care. Ward rows in the Met file add up to less than the borough total, 2,571 of 3,006 last year and 3,230 of 3,452 this year, so some of the rise may be offences now being given a location.
Vehicle crime: third highest count in London
The Assembly’s note lists Haringey (16.48), Enfield (15.90), Westminster (15.61) and Hammersmith and Fulham (14.85) as the boroughs with the highest vehicle theft rates per 1,000 residents. Those rates come from a security company’s blog post, not the Met, and its list gives no period. Barnet is not on it.
Rates and counts answer different questions. By count, the Met file puts Barnet third of the 32 boroughs, with 3,894 vehicle offences in the 12 months to September. Only Newham (4,912) and Ealing (4,358) recorded more, and Enfield was four behind on 3,890.
Barnet’s total is down 2.4% from 3,988, a smaller fall than London’s 6.5% (90,172 to 84,299). Within it:
- Theft from a vehicle: 1,909, up from 1,824.
- Theft or unauthorised taking of a vehicle: 1,568, down from 1,683.
- Interfering with a vehicle: 399, down from 469.
- Aggravated vehicle taking: 18, up from 12.
The two biggest categories rarely end in a positive outcome: 34 across 3,477 offences in Barnet over the year, about 1%. For the same two categories, London’s total was 1,030 across 75,598 offences, or 1.4%.
Friern Barnet (261), Hendon (256) and West Finchley (223) have the highest ward counts for vehicle offences.
Gun crime: down in Barnet
London recorded 1,679 gun offences between August 2025 and July 2026, down from 1,918 in the previous period, the Assembly said, citing a report in The Standard. The Standard named Enfield (110) and Brent (108) as the highest boroughs.
Over the same months, the Met’s latest file shows 52 gun offences in Barnet, down from 74. The 12 months to September show the same direction: 55, down from 70.
Palantir: the contract goes back out to tender
Members may also ask about the lawsuit between the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and Palantir, which it says was recently dropped. A re-procurement will follow for the Met’s Unified Operational Analytics system, and Palantir can bid.
In a statement dated 14 October, MOPAC said the two sides “have each withdrawn their allegations against each other”. It said its decision in May 2026 not to enter a contract “was not based on Palantir’s values or ethics or any wider reporting about the company”, and that “Palantir is free and welcomed to participate”.
The questions that could give Barnet’s answer
The written questions for the meeting go further than the published data. Gareth Roberts AM asks, borough by borough:
- what share of shoplifting reports led to a police visit to the business, for each of the last 12 months;
- how many vehicle thefts were reported, and what percentage led to a suspect being charged;
- how many carjackings were reported, and what percentage were solved.
He also asks how the Met assesses Palantir’s value for money and how many staff hours the software has saved, while Susan Hall AM asks what the MOPAC and Greater London Authority legal costs in the Palantir case came to and which budgets are paying them.
What it means for you
- You can watch or go. The meeting is in the Chamber at City Hall, Kamal Chunchie Way, E16 1ZE, from 10am on Thursday 5 November. The Assembly says media and the public can attend, or follow it on the webcast or YouTube, live or later.
- If you run a shop in Barnet, the police visit figures Roberts has asked for would show how often a report gets someone at the door in this borough. We will publish them if they are released.
- If you own a car in Barnet, theft from vehicles is the one large category that rose here over the year.
After the questions, members debate ten motions, including one on antisemitism and London’s Jewish community that we covered last week. The Police and Crime Committee was due to question the Met’s Police Federation on cuts the day before. The full agenda papers are on the Assembly’s site.
Have your say