The National Association of Business Crime Partnerships (NABCP) conference on October 9 was a coming together of the business crime reduction partnership ‘family’, Mark Rowe reports.
Roughly half the audience was from business improvement districts, and half BCRPs, which equally reflected how BIDs may come to take a role in preventing crime in their area – as one of the speakers, Lisa Carlson, CEO of Canterbury BID, set out; the varied and twisted ups and downs of partnership working in some localities; and above all, how for some businesses suffering from verbal abuse, shop theft and violence, what matters above all is not this structure or that, but results.
Another of the speakers from a BID, Rich Lane, head of operations and business crime at It’s In Nottingham, spoke eloquently about how in his three years as head of operations and business crime at the Nottingham city centre BID, he’s brought in numerous pieces of kit – body-worn video that doubles as retail radio, and the Alert intelligence-sharing platform from Shopsafe – but it’s been the hiring of the contractor My Local Bobby in April which has linked it all, and led to partnership working between businesses, the Nottingham City Council CCTV control room, and the police to enable arrests of thieves and commercial burglars, including some startlingly quick outcomes – an overnight burglar being charged 16 hours after the crimes.
Earlier, the event in Birmingham opened with official speakers: the North Wales police and crime commissioner Andy Dunbobbin (who gamely talked through the venue’s fire alarm test), Sophie Jordan as CEO of the NABCP (featured in the October 2024 edition of Professional Security Magazine) and the new (replacing Supt Patrick Holdaway) head of the police’s National Business Crime Centre (NBCC), Supt Lisa Maslen. She began her endearingly candid talk by acknowledging that theft from retail was high (the official ‘Tackling retail crime together’ strategy published in July called it ‘unprecedented’). In fact she described the total estimated by the retail sector of perhaps 20 million incidents of shop theft a year as ‘staggering’.
Working group
She echoed Dunbobbin that crime on the high street, not only affects shops (their profitability, and the well-being of staff, who may feel like working elsewhere because of the threats) but – Maslen quoted the ‘broken windows’ theory of crime – may contribute to a wider public feeling of civic decline, whether due to vandalism or anti-social behaviour; or ‘street nuisances’ (a term of a later speaker, Jonathan Newman of Great Yarmouth town centre partnership, which runs a team of patrolling wardens). Jonathan set out a two-year-old ‘safe and secure’ working group of BID managers under The BID Foundation, which this year went under the umbrella of the ATCM (Association of Town Centre Management). Lisa Carson chairs the ATCM. As all this suggests, there’s no lack of good work going on, both by partners themselves (the official speakers dutifully noted Labour’s neighbourhood policing guarantee, and ‘Safer Streets Summer’ campaign) and in sharing intelligence. From the floor Professional Security Magazine raised that ‘Safer Streets Summer’; it ran from July to the end of September; but what about now, in October?! Iris Smith, chair of the Gravesend crime partnership, and a publican in the Kent town, echoed this, urging consistent, regular police presence, rather than an intermittent ‘operation’ which did not deter the criminals. Hence the ever wider use by BIDs of on-street, SIA-badged officers, as in Canterbury, acknowledging, without seeking to blame anyone, that police simply don’t have the resources to provide a beat bobby-like service (and as Lisa Maslen acknowledged).
Fusion cell
All the tools are in place to prosecute high street offenders, as set out over the day. Lisa Maslen described criminal behaviour orders as ‘a really valuable deterrent’, while acknowledging that criminal cases take a long time to get to court (and in any case ‘the prisons are full’, and we ‘have to be smarter’, ‘because policing cannot arrest their way out of this problem’). Hence more ‘creative’ orders and bans, such as banning an offender from a named retailer nationwide. She gave credit that the ‘Tackling retail crime’ strategy that she inherited was a result of 18 months of work. She did lay down some markers – a feature of the strategy is a proposed ‘retail crime fusion cell’ that would bring together ‘aggregated data’. The document avoided who would run and host the ‘cell’; she said she felt it’s a police responsibility, because retailers and security providers won’t share, but are confident in sharing with police. This would appear to oppose any commercial efforts to ‘own’ the strategy (the strategy launch was at the Northampton ‘hub’ of contractor Mitie, where it runs outsourced operations for some high street retailers).
Ask for Angela
Besides tech, training of non-security retail staff matters. The trainer Iwona Kossek gave a session on the ‘Ask for Angela’ scheme, whereby someone feeling vulnerable or harassed can ask someone discreetly for ‘Angela’ to signal that they want help, whether a quiet exit or a taxi. Who’s best placed to pick up on harassment? she asked. Not door staff or a manager (who’s busy) but a glass collector. Even if they are young and inexperienced, if they are trained to spot signs of harassment, they can be empowered to alert door or other staff, who can then intervene (ideally, early). While Ask for Angela has been for the night-time economy of pubs and clubs, one ambition of organisers is to work with bugger retailers to get a bespoke equivalent for the day-time.
Summed up
Lisa Maslen said: “I strongly believe we have never collaborated in this space more, or better than we do; but there are so many opportunities to go further.” As Sophie Jordan summed up: “Partnership working is simple, but it’s not easy. We have always faced challenges, but we just need to keep going, because we really are now on top of our games, in finally getting recognition for our sector. We have been working for so long on this – let’s solve the big problem that we have.”
Next month
The next Safer Business Week runs from November 10. Visit nbcc.police.uk/news/nbcc-confirms-dates-for-the-2025-week-of-action-to-target-business-crime. That week is also Respect Week.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Canterbury city centre
