A first national BCRP week is running from March 17 to 23. The aim; to raise awareness of high street and town centre business crime reduction partnerships, and their work, ‘united against crime’.
As with an established annual October week of action by police on business crime, the week is intended as a showcase of BCRPs, including work preventing shop theft; or schemes such as ‘safe space’ or ‘Ask Angela’ whereby sites offer to look after vulnerable people if they ask for help.
June date
The criminologist Prof Emmeline Taylor is hosting a thought leadership conference on Friday, June 6 at her institution in London, City St George’s. That was released during a Teams call by Supt Patrick Holdaway of the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC), who introduced Sophie Jordan, of the National Association of Business Crime partnerships (NABCP), also lead assessor for national BCRP accreditation; and Emmeline Taylor, who chairs a standards board for BCRPs. Expect a flurry of BCRPs that have been assessed and passed, Sophie told the call, as 19 have been signed off in the last year. Among recent partnerships assessed are Folkestone, High Wycombe, Dover and Liverpool.
Assessing
The NABCP are the sole assessing body. Other assessors are veterans of partnership work: Steve Gallagher (Swansea), Jane Bastock (Winchester) and Maxine Fraser (Retailers Against Crime).
Background
The background, as police acknowledge, is a surge in reported theft from retail, and physical violence and verbal abuse of retail staff. Police are keen to see BCRPs, which make a difference; and BCRPs accredited, to give assurance that a partnership has governance. While national accreditation has been by the police company Police Crime Prevention Initiatives (PCPI) for some years, police felt it was time for a review; likewise, police are reviewing the Government’s retail crime action plan, which dates from the Rishi Sunak Conservative Government in October 2023.
BCRPs defined
Sophie Jordan set out what is a partnership. It usually employs a coordinator, and has a board of management or steering group to provide direction of local representatives, typically from businesses (who pay a subscription to be a BCRP member), police and council. Usually a BCRP provides a radio scheme (whether for day or night economy, or both), and intelligence-sharing software; and briefings and an exclusion scheme whereby regular or serious offenders are banned from member stores. Sophie also set out how a BCRP isn’t the same as a business improvement district (BID), though a BID may provide such a ‘safety and security’ service to its members, who have to pay a levy. If a BID’s BCRP work is assessed, the rest of the BID isn’t (other accreditations are available for other strands of BID work).
Standards
Prof Emmeline Taylor, who’s researched crime against business, reported for NBCC in late 2022 on BCRPs for the NBCC. She found some issues around governance of some partnerships, and how they share data, and how some BCRPs have found it difficult to show they’re effective, to others (such as national retailers paying for perhaps hundreds of memberships). Hence accreditation, under the Secured by Design banner (the BCRP accreditation logo has had a refresh). As chair of the standards board, Emmeline meets quarterly with invited partnerships such as the London-based Safer Business Network, Brighton’s, and RAC; the BID umbrella bodies British BIDs and BID Foundation; and retailers. One tweak to accreditation is that it’s now for three years (previously two). Organisers ask that accredited partnerships report if they have major changes, such as to personnel.
Funding
Funding remains an issue for most stand-alone BCRPs, Emmeline acknowledged; which means that they may struggle to do any long-term planning.
More reading
More in the April edition of Professional Security Magazine. Each edition since October has featured a BCRP; the March issue features Exeter Business Against Crime (EBAC), whose manager is Andy Sharman. Pictured: Exeter city centre.
