You asked
Please provide the amount of money lost by businesses to fraud from 2014 to 2018?
If possible, I would like the information broken down by region: North East, North West, Yorkshire, West Midlands, East Midlands, South East, South West and London; alongside the industry the business operates in.
I would also be grateful for information regarding the type of fraud.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry as to the amount of money lost by businesses to fraud from 2014 to 2018.
Unfortunately, we do not hold the information you have requested. New questions on fraud and computer misuse were introduced into the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) in October 2015. However, the CSEW is a household survey and as such, information collected on fraud offences only relates to the resident adult population. Fraud against businesses is not covered by the CSEW.
For information, the Home Office runs a Commercial Victimisation Survey (CVS). This is a telephone survey in which respondents from a representative sample of business premises in certain sectors in England and Wales are asked about crimes experienced at their premises in the 12 months prior to interview. In 2017, for example, four sectors were surveyed: Wholesale and retail; Agriculture, forestry and fishing; Arts, entertainment and recreation; and, Manufacturing.
Data are available on the number of incidents and incidence rates of fraud, as well as the number and proportion of premises that experienced fraud in the previous year, by industry sector. The survey also collects information on areas such as the cost of crime, online crime and organised crime.
Data are published on the Home Office’s Crime against businesses statistics web pages. Further queries about the CVS should be directed to the Home Office at the following email address: crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk.
You may also be interested to know that the Retail Crime Survey includes estimated costs of fraud and cyber crime on the UK retail industry. This is conducted annually by the British Retail Consortium, a leading trade association that represents all forms of retailers.
In addition, the Cyber Security Breaches Survey focuses on business action on cyber security and the costs and impacts of cyber breaches and attacks.
If you have any further questions, please email us at crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will endeavour to help.