Tesco rolls out body cams to delivery staff 'vulnerable to attack' due to expanded age checks

The UK's astir fashionable supermarket is rolling retired assemblage cameras to thousands of its transportation drivers who consciousness astatine accrued hazard of onslaught owed to the enlargement of property verification checks.

Tesco has said 5,000 of its workers who present buying to customers' homes volition beryllium provided with body-worn cameras by the extremity of the year.

The determination is successful effect to "escalating levels of threats and violence" towards drivers successful caller years, the supermarket said.

Money latest: Restaurant sends bitter connection to customers

A proceedings tally by the retailer showed the cameras enactment arsenic a deterrent and trim superior incidents against drivers by 50%, it said.

The cameras are lone turned connected if a operator feels unsafe, and determination are plans for a wider rollout adjacent year, Tesco said.

The institution delivers 1.45 cardinal online market orders a week.

An accrued menace

Delivery workers are "particularly" susceptible retail staff, said the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW), who welcomed the move.

The enlargement of property verification to knives has been a caller contented for the employees to woody with.

Under the property cheque laws, transportation drivers are legally required to verify the property of the radical receiving a transportation of restricted goods similar alcohol, baccy and, recently, knives.

"Our members archer america this tin beryllium precise problematic and they consciousness susceptible to attack," USDAW said.

A survey of 300 workers from the national indicated 77% had been a unfortunate of abuse, 13% were assaulted, and 26% had refused a transportation owed to fearfulness for their ain idiosyncratic information successful the past year.

More to do

While a caller standalone offence of assaulting a retail idiosyncratic is being introduced via the government's Crime and Policing Bill, transportation drivers are not included.

Both USDAW and Tesco person called for this class of unit to beryllium included successful the offence, "particularly arsenic they enactment unsocial without the extortion that comes with being successful a store", the retailer added.

Such an summation would bring England and Wales successful enactment with Scotland, wherever transportation drivers are wrong scope.

Tesco said the instrumentality has brought down reported cases, compared to the remainder of the UK.