A free crime prevention toolkit for retailers is a collaboration by the UK police’s National Business Crime Centre (NBCC) and the UK police not-for-profit company Police Crime Prevention Initiatives (Police CPI). The toolkit, designed at the request of the Home Office, aims to provide guidance to support businesses in keeping safe from crime and helping to prevent crime affecting staff.
Covered in the toolkit (you can download it from the Secured by Design website) are:
- Physical security
- Cyber security
- Safety and Security
- Prevention
- Reporting
- Offender management
- Training
- Employee support; and
- Corporate support
Supt Lisa Maslen, the National Business Crime Centre lead, said: “I am delighted that this course and toolkit that have been produced are now available. They will be an invaluable resource for retailers and policing colleagues in our bid to tackle retail crime together. Keeping those who work in retail and our communities safe by disrupting retail crime remains the NBCCs priority, this toolkit will go a long way to help deliver that.”
Amanda Mulholland, Learning and Development Manager of the Police Crime Prevention Academy, part of Police CPI, introduced the toolkit at the National Association of Business Crime Partnerships (NABCP) conference in Birmingham on October 9. She spoke of how the guidance can enable retailers to pinpoint areas of improvement in their security measures; from the surroundings, to the shell of a building, and inside, as a process for assessing what’s in place and is it working. For a business improvement district (BID) or a business crime reduction partnership (BCRP), the toolkit can be used to look at an area as a whole; if a place such as an alleyway does not feel safe, you can consider why (does the area require more lighting?).
