Workers at a charity shop have revealed their “constant battle” against thieves has led them to close fitting rooms and hide stock, as clothes, shoes and even furniture handles are stolen.

Staff at Making a Difference to Maidstone (MADM) describe the surge in shoplifting as a “slap in the face”, amid a 55% increase in thefts over the last four years.

The charity runs both a second-hand shop in Maidstone High Street and an outreach centre in Church Street in the town. It supports individuals and families who find themselves in crisis through homelessness, domestic abuse, addiction, financial need, unemployment or a relationship breakdown.

The organisation was founded in 2015 after growing from the Maidstone Churches Winter Shelter initiative, and took over its current High Street premises in 2021.

However, staff told KentOnline that despite its low prices and charity status, their shop has become a regular victim of theft.

“It makes it difficult to carry on,” said Emma Colhoun, warehouse and shop manager for MADM.

“We make an amazing display of the things that we’ve been donated, you go round really excited and think, ‘did we sell that?’ Check on the CCTV and someone’s actually stolen it.

“If something’s over a certain price I can’t put it out on the shop floor because the likelihood is, it’ll get stolen.

“We’re constantly trying to find ways to battle it,” she said, explaining that because a man regularly stole shoes, the shop now only puts out one shoe at a time for display rather than a complete pair.

“I went into the fitting room last week and there was something like 18 hangers on the floor where someone had just gone in there and stolen so much clothes from us.”

After closing the fitting rooms entirely, she said they opted to reopen one, but then “that was open for an hour and a half, I went to check it, somebody had left all the clothes on the floor and they’d swapped their clothes for our clothes”.

She added: “Someone is even stealing the handles off my furniture, bizarrely.

“I know 95% of my customers don’t steal, but 5% do and I need to protect the charity from that 5% but unfortunately it has such a knock on effect on those other customers.”

She said the additional CCTV and relocation of the fitting roomsmay even force them to increase their prices, and that theft is so frequent she could not even accurately guess how much has been taken.

“They’re not stealing food, they’re stealing a nice evening dress.

“It’s just a bit of a slap in the face – we do all of this work and then you just steal it, it’s so frustrating.

“You’re constantly monitoring and you have to look at customers in a different way because you’re concerned about stealing.”

It comes after statistics from the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner’s (PCC) Making Kent Safer Plan earlier this year show a 55% increase in shoplifting offences over the past four years.

Matthew Scott, Kent PCC, said: “It’s a crime that is massively under reported so we want to encourage more people to come forward, more people to tell us about what’s happening so we can bring more offenders to account.

“We’ve done a lot of work with businesses to encourage them to report which they were not doing before

“For shoplifting, not only are we seeing more reports we’re seeing more people being held to account for those offences,” he said.

Robert Foley, manager at MADM, said: “Everything this shop makes goes into our outreach centre and the outreach work we do, so anything that is stolen is taken away potentially from a family being fed or getting what they need.”

“It’s taking staff away from vital areas to be watching those very few people that do this, and it has a massive impact on everybody and the morale of the shop.”

He says part of the increase in theft is due to the cost of living crisis, with their outreach centre now seeing about five people who need help a day, and often more.

Though he did note that not all the theft is caused by poverty, adding: “With the influx of new people coming into Maidstone, the rise in temporary accommodation tenants - I’m not saying it’s them in particular but we’ve definitely seen a rise in people and a rise in opportunistic and organised theft in the town.

“Come to us, you don’t need to steal it, we’re happy to give it to you once we meet you and know your needs,” he stressed.