"Civil recovery" demands from shops

dacouch

Surely staff costs in dealing with a investigation / disciplinary matter are a standard employer cost.

Is the next intention to start charging employees for dealing with the costs associated with them through illness absence etc

mo786uk

Is it debatable -in some shops that have security staff etc then dealing with a thief may take 20 minutes but in other cases and in smaller shosp it could tie up staff for hours.

The question of how much a shop could claim is not totally clear. What QC says in his opinion is that
a) there is case law to sugegst companeis cna recover 'lost time'
b) the civil recovery companeis can pick a price as to how much they wil lsettle for withotu going to court
c) it would be upto a court to decide what is reaosnable if it went to court.

obviously if it never goes to court then we will never know what the courts decide is reasonable - i.e the full whack or just a small amount

Googlewhacker

Personally I am of the belief that if someone is prosecuted and found guilty then they MUST pay for the police time taken to investigate and the shops time (upto a reasonable amount).

Imagine how much more policing could be done if the criminals actually had to pay for the time they waste....

james_joyce

Just an update, from this week's Private Eye!

(I don't work for them, honestly).

The article says:

"In what is being seen as a test case of the practice the...judge threw out civil claims...sent to each of two young girls caught by store security staff stealing make-up. The cosmetics were recovered and the police called but no charge was brought".

The key issue appears to be the amount of the civil claim against the girls, exceeded the actual costs incurred.

In this particular example, the costs of security staff were mentioned in the claim, but the point is made that security staff are employed to deal with issues like this in the first place, ie there isn't necessarily much, if any, additional staff cost involved.