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As an amateur historian, of all the periods of British history, the centuries that fascinates me the most are the 400s and 500s. Why and when did the Roman Empire fall, and what came next? One of the few recorded events is an appeal from the province of Britain to the Emperor Honorius in the year 410, appealing for troops to keep off invaders from the north, Ireland and east. Nothing came of the โgroans of the Britonsโ. It may appear important only because it survived. We now know better than to neatly compartmentalise British history as during my childhood as Roman from 43BC to 410, then Anglo-Saxon to 1066, as if in January 410 the Saxons stood waiting on the shores, hands folded, perhaps tapping their feet impatiently, or even pointing haughtily at sun-dials, as they waited for the Romans to depart. The story does serve to show that urban communities in Britain have a long history of desiring protection.
Roman towns
Lately by coincidence I have been to three cities, Gloucester (as featured in the November edition of Professional Security Magazine), Exeter (as the guest of Andy Sharman of Exeter Business Against Crime, EBAC) and yesterday Lincoln, all historic Roman towns, to report on their business crime partnership work. While travelling, prolific criminals may target them, organised retail crime tends to follow the motorways and trunk roads that allow fast and easy in-and-outs. Lincolnโs near 2000 years of settlement beginning with the Romans began for more military reasons; leave London from High Barnet (note the name) and head north, and Lincoln has about the only high ground you come to, before the Vale of York. Control it, and you control the region.
The mile or so of more or less straight road from Bailgate down the correctly-named Steep Hill (pictured) along the high street and over a railway crossing to St Markโs is as historic and evocative as any in Britain. Around the millennium I interviewed two dozen veterans of Bomber Command. Some served in Royal Australian Air Force squadrons at Waddington outside Lincoln. One man, the Black Country man and wireless operator Norman Corbett told me that when he saw the towers of Lincoln Cathedral, he was nearly safe again after a mission. At the weekend the weather was so foul that flying would surely have been โscrubbedโ (postponed, in Bomber Command slang). Still the high street was busy with shoppers on Saturday, where 80 years ago air crew let off for the night would have thronged the pubs and dance halls.
About BIDs
Lincoln is not perfect – it has a former Debenhams department store at St Markโs, still empty, like those in most places – Gloucester, exceptionally, has its becoming a University of Gloucestershire campus. Lincoln does have much going for it; a busy day-time and night-time economy, and a new university. Two issues arise. Lincoln has a business improvement district, Lincoln BIG (Business Improvement Group) that in November (like Exeter) gained a โyesโ vote from enough businesses to have a further five-year term. As Lincolnโs is its fifth, that makes it one of the few longest-running. That implies the crime reduction and other services Lincoln BIG offers are appealing enough for the levy that businesses have to pay. Or put another way, the prospect of losing those services (such as a retail radio, and โcity wardenโ patrollers of that mile or so) is too unappealing, as theyโd only have to be rebuilt by some similar partnership body. While Britain has about 300 BIDs, thatโs far from every town and city (some cities have several).
Questions
Whatโs the relation between BIDs that do good work, and successful towns? Can a place thrive without a BID? Or, does the presence of a cadre of civic-minded people to form a BID board, and enough businesses that can afford a levy besides their rates, imply that successful towns generate a BID? Is there another side of the coin, that troubled towns for whatever reason (too small, too economically depressed) cannot generate resources to do crime reduction work. Where bigger cities such as Birmingham and London have several BIDs, are parts of those cities without BIDs, also in need of a leg-up from national level?
Ecosystem
The second issue also has a national dimension. Lincoln has evening wardens also, paid for with Home Office Safer Streets Fund money, that runs out in March. There as elsewhere, councils (or police and crime commissioners, or BIDs) may fund such services further (and no doubt those so employed would welcome some certainty about their income). Numerous towns are developing an ecosystem of uniformed patrollers of public space, besides the police. In terms of who pays for and employs the patrollers, and even their name (wardens, rangers, Security?) each town or city is inventing its own wheels (more in the February 2025 edition of Professional Security Magazine). You may regard that as only reasonable, that each place arranges what suits its geography and hours of demand. Or, itโs so patchy as to be a mess, crying out for national direction.
