Alongside the call for business crime reduction and community safety is a wider sense of the need for civic renewal, in many places, whether on the coast or inland, in the north or southern shires. To name – at the risk of singling out unfairly – a few places I have seen in 2024: Carlisle, that did see development of Botchergate, the A6, once a main road from England to Scotland, and that is due to have investment by the University of Cumbria, In fact, universities or the NHS are two institutions that seem best placed to revive flagging high streets, as retail cannot. The empty branches of Debenhams, a couple of years after the retail chain closed its physical presence, tells its own story. That hospital trusts may take up substantial space in a shopping centre for a ‘hub’ offering services short of those requiring a bed suits all sides – what property manager would not want a tenant as sure to pay as the NHS? That stands to bring new issues for security managers, whether in the NHS or unis, or mall and retail,
The loss of some or all branches of chains such as Primark, M&S, WH Smith, Wilko and others not only hits high streets physically and reputationally. Those chains were likely to have a security guard that might well, even if informally, gave support, moral and physical, to other guards in the vicinity if assaulted. The loss of those guards, hardly compensated for by the ‘uplift’ of police officers much trumpeted in the years of the Boris Johnson regime, has left high streets in civic terms at a dangerous low.
Business crime reduction partnerships (BCRPs) like numerous other civic groups have long run thanks to a few unstinting volunteers – the Scouting movement, Red Cross, Territorials, youth sport. It doesn’t take the loss of many volunteers for things to fall down altogether. Other signs of the civic running-down are, whether in Carlisle, Stafford or Chatham, not hard to see: boarded up or burned out premises that are home only to pigeons; fly-posting, that may advance the careers of Becky Hill and Paloma Faith, but otherwise does not look good; graffiti, whether more or less officially encouraged to look artistic, or not. In doorways, the tell-tale signs of rough sleepers; blankets and sat-upon cardboard. While not saying anything against such unfortunate people, the sight of beggars, made routine provincially in the 2010s, let alone fights between them on the street, can prompt shoppers to choose out of town malls (near Chatham, for example, is Bluewater).
Retail could do more for themselves. One chain’s security officer on a vape break told Professional Security of how she had come back from a fortnight’s holiday to find that the retail radio as provided by the town’s business crime partnership (which has fewer members than it once did) had not been used. The store had been hit by thieves (who are observant; just as canny shoppers go from shop to shop looking for the cheapest toothpaste or whatever, thieves will scout a town to seek stores where it’s easiest to steal). Perhaps it’s the old story that employees do no more than their own job; security is done by the person with that in their title. Or employees, knowing no better, assume that police are the best informed about town centre crime, and keeping order can be left to them, or, if an incident crops up, a 999 call will suffice. When in truth the towns with active BCRPs know far more about the span and amount of crime than the police. Yet charity shops do not have security guards at the door nor loss prevention specialists, and they can be keen users of retail radios and other BCRP services, as they combat people who seek to defraud charity shops with refund fraud, or fake banknotes or other scams.
Photo by Mark Rowe: mural, Weston super Mare town centre.
