Forecourt Losses - ANPR and More

In this episode of the ECR Retail Loss Sell More and Lose Less podcast, host Colin Peacock talks with Professor Emmeline Taylor about the growing challenges of forecourt losses via drive-offs and no means of payment at petrol stations.

They explore the complexity of different offender types – from organised criminal groups to forgetful customers and opportunists – and how technologies such as ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) and digital incident reporting can help.

The discussion covers staff safety, data-sharing hurdles (including the paper-based DVLA process in the UK), and why mandatory pay at pump is not a simple solution because it undermines in-store sales.

They also look ahead to the potential of video analytics, stronger retailer–police collaboration, and emerging issues like fraud on electric vehicle charging points.

Cleaned transcript

Introductions and context

COLIN:

Hello and welcome to the ECR Retail Loss Sell More and Lose Less podcast.

This week I’m joined by Professor Emmeline Taylor to talk about the challenges of forecourt losses via drive-offs and no means of payment.

At ECR, for the last, maybe even eight years or so, we’ve been working with retailers who have forecourts and looking at the problem of no means of payment, but also drive-offs. The group is mainly made up of UK retailers. We’ve had some American retailers as well, but the model in the UK and in Australia is based on petrol forecourts.

We try to encourage people to go into the shop and make purchases – that’s how the model works. So you fill up with petrol, you walk into the petrol station, into a convenience store, you buy some goods, pay, and then you drive off.

Of course, we then have people who forget that part of the process and just drive off. When we first started this, we saw some great examples from New Zealand, including even the police actually driving off with a big “whoops” moment.

We also have no means of payment, which again is something that happens – people coming in and saying, “Look, I forgot my bank cards,” or whatever it might be.

We’ve been looking at the role of technology, and this is where the video working group has picked this up. What role can ANPR play in this? As we’ve discovered, there are also some fundamentals around digital reporting – moving away from the paper-and-pen approach and trying to remember the number plate.

I always remember in this particular group, one retailer shared that they installed ANPR but it was covert to the member of the public, although overt to the store staff. Within the first three months of the trial, the number of drive-offs went down by 60 percent. I wonder why that happened! Very interesting. Clearly collusion is a big part of this.

This year, we actually had a record number of retailers on the call, again mainly from the UK – the likes of Tesco, BP, Shell, Asda and other retailers in the UK who sell petrol. So probably about 80 or 90 percent of the petrol market were represented.

We needed some independence, and we had a case study from one retailer showing: “We’ve introduced digital reporting, we’ve introduced ANPR, and these are our levels of losses.” So that brought an independent perspective.

We then heard from another retailer that had just moved to the introduction of digital reporting, moving from paper reporting. With digital reporting, it’s kind of a third-party service, so you hand it off and someone then does the civil recovery. That’s where you improve the number of claims, improve the reporting and so on.

So that’s the setup. From your perspective, you joined the call – thank you – what were some of the things you picked up on? If you were a retailer listening to this podcast, what would you say are the key things to think about as you look at those two particular problems?

Forecourt losses: The complexity of forecourt crime and offender types

EMMELINE:

Yes, so this was my first meeting for the forecourt and FDR group, and I joined the call thinking, “Surely this is quite a simple thing to resolve.”

How wrong was I!

There’s a huge complexity to the technology being used, and particularly to the different offender profiles, and how technology might or might not impact on them.

We talked about things like organised criminal groups that are stealing in bulk. Some of the examples that were given were quite eye-watering.

Then you’ve got the forgetful people. As you said, even the police themselves have been guilty of this. It can be a genuine mistake.

It might also be a genuine mistake that you don’t have any means of payment. You haven’t just driven off, you’ve held your hands up, but how do you then ensure that you track that person at a later date?

And then you’ve got your occasional opportunist, particularly towards the end of the month when people’s budgets have started to get a bit tighter.

You mentioned collusion as well, and I feel there still isn’t quite enough visibility on exactly how that is being operated by staff. So perhaps a bit more research or evidence around that is really key.

ANPR, staff training and best practice on alerts

EMMELINE:

Let’s talk about ANPR, because this was a big focus of the meeting, and there were some good examples in the presentation about how it was effective and how it was being used.

A lot of the conversation then shifted to training of staff. We want to make sure that employees feel supported, that they feel safe and confident when the ANPR is triggered, and also improve their morale around this.

I thought this was interesting – what you do when you get an alert is really key. What were your observations on this? What did you feel was best practice from what we heard?

COLIN:

Yes, to your point, one of the metrics that one of the retailers used was the number of drive-off incidents prevented.

That’s when a vehicle has committed a crime at one of the retailer’s premises and then comes back – or it could be the same premises and they come back again.

So then you’re asking, “How is that interaction handled?”

My sense is that it was handled quite well because there is digital evidence to say, “Look, you came in on this particular date and you drove off. I’ve been instructed by my head office that I cannot authorise this pump. Huge apologies. If this has been a mistake, please let us know and write to us.”

So there’s a script that uses the evidence, but doesn’t put the member of staff in a confrontational position.

EMMELINE:

Yes, and I really liked the focus on protecting staff – that they could just use the tannoy so they didn’t have to be in close proximity to somebody, reducing the potential for things to become aggressive.

That felt like a good way to support staff as well.

Data sharing, DVLA and outdated processes

EMMELINE:

You mentioned the sharing of data and intelligence. I was quite surprised to hear that in the UK, the suggestion was that the DVLA is still paper-based. It sounded hugely resource-intensive.

I think you also have to use postal orders, if you remember those!

COLIN:

Yes, it’s a really convoluted, paper-based effort for petrol forecourt retailers to get hold of DVLA details.

It’s annoying for them because it takes up time and envelopes, but perhaps even more galling is that car park operatorscan do it almost instantly. They now have access to it in a much more streamlined way.

What we did hear from the police who were on the call was that there may be some changes ahead, which is really encouraging.

EMMELINE:

Fingers crossed. It just seems like such a barrier. We live in a digital world, so it feels very archaic.

Pay at pump versus the forecourt business model

EMMELINE:

One of the things that I came to the call presuming – and I think a lot of people presume – is that pay at pump is the answer.

But we heard quite clearly from the retailers on the call that all the margin is in the shops, and they’d lose so much in lost sales if you had mandatory pay at pump.

I think one of the retailers went so far as to say this is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. There has to be a more sophisticated way of dealing with it, and it would appear that ANPR is the answer, or at least a major part of the answer.

COLIN:

Yes, I think we saw, in terms of what the levels of losses were, that most were under one percent. But it soon adds up because there’s a lot of money in fuel sales.

It’s quite hard to get this prioritised within a big organisation because the petrol forecourt is just part of a bigger shop. The losses on the petrol forecourt will be dwarfed by what they lose in the store, and it’s physically a distance away. So getting a level of priority is a challenge.

Going back to your point about pay at pump, it is the model around the world, and the police are very keen to promote this model: “Well, you’ll solve all your problems.”

Yes, but you might also undermine your business.

We also heard there were a lot of people who aren’t very keen on pay at pump. There are some issues around contactless payment that don’t seem to work so well.

And from what I’ve seen myself, the pay-at-pump facilities often aren’t used. People prefer to fuel up and then go into the shop, maybe because they want to buy something else. That seemed to be a clear trend.

Remote monitoring, the forecourt–convenience model and digital reporting

COLIN:

We heard about overnight monitoring of these sites too – when you can operate them remotely, people are doing that.

But I still think the model you see out there – where you’ve got a convenience store and a petrol station together – is something that shoppers find attractive as a business model. And certainly retailers do as well.

So it seems to me that technology – through digital reporting, integration with video, making that whole thing quite seamless – and then being able to pass it on to the police really quickly, and being able to block repeat offenders, has real potential.

In five years’ time, it could become quite difficult to steal a car and get fuel.

Future opportunities: video analytics, cloned plates and banning repeat offenders

COLIN:

I think there are opportunities in terms of video analytics when that DVLA database is more easily accessible. You’d have something like:

“Here’s a registration number. Because cloned plates are a big problem, here’s the registration number. It should be a red Mercedes… Oh, hang on, it’s a white Ford. What’s going on here?”

Given the technology we see in other parts of the retail world that we both work in, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to do this for cars. Number plates are easy to read.

Motorbikes might be more problematic, but it seems pretty encouraging that digital technology could prove to be very valuable here, and potentially solve much of the problem.

Because if that number plate is banned, then what happens next? How does it feel to try to fuel up when the system won’t authorise the pump?

EMMELINE:

Yes, absolutely. And that evidence or intelligence is of so much use to law enforcement more broadly.

We know that vehicle theft, particularly of luxury vehicles, is on the increase, and then those vehicles are used for other illicit activities.

So it’s part of a bigger jigsaw, isn’t it? Putting all the pieces together and law enforcement working with retail to support one another.

International examples and the role of law enforcement

COLIN:

Yes, and I think they’re more advanced in the use of this technology in Australia and certainly New Zealand.

In New Zealand, police would be able to go into some of these digital evidence apps, type in the number plate, and see which petrol forecourt the vehicle turned up at.

One of the advantages of petrol forecourts is that you see the driver. The driver is captured both in the store and at the pump, with much better pictures of them.

So I can see that for law enforcement this could become a real enabler – helping them with better detection of other crimes, not just driving off without paying.

I think it’s a real way that retailers can connect to law enforcement and help make the whole area a bit safer. It’s quite encouraging from that point of view.

EMMELINE:

Absolutely. I’m really excited to see how this space develops.

Emerging fraud on electric vehicle charging and closing remarks

COLIN:

Yes, and we heard a bit about that too – some of the fraud going on with electric vehicle charging.

That’ll be the next thing: how people are trying to diddle their way to free charging.

That’s why we work on the dark side, you see. There’s always work for us on the dark side of retail.

But thanks for that. We are regrouping again in January 2026, so we’ll see what progress has been made.

Thank you very much.

Well, that’s all we have time for this week. Thank you for joining us, and thanks to all the ECR Retail Loss community for sharing their knowledge, research and latest learnings, which ensure that we truly become a global platform for learning.

My name is Colin Peacock. This is the Sell More and Lose Less podcast. If you liked it, please subscribe so you automatically get all future episodes.

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