BIDs (business improvement districts) were the subject of Prof Martin Gill’s OSPAs webinar last week.
The three speakers gave British perspectives: Karol Doherty, security manager for We Are Waterloo, the BID to the east of the London rail terminal; Grant Stewart, who works for the BID in Edinburgh city centre; and Chris Turner, the chief executive of the trade body for the country’s 334 BIDs, British BIDs.
As ever, the webinar opened with each speaker giving their first thoughts, and Karol first. He set out the different sorts of security by a BID, whether marketed by the BID or not, and whether hired-in wardens or street patrollers or other sorts of security (or none). Because of the proposed legal responsibility on venues to protect against terrorism, Martyn’s Law, Karol said that businesses in his area were already asking him to do a building risk assessment, or site survey. A BID (formed, usually in a city or town centre, to provide services beyond those provided by the council, such as street cleaning and marketing) can provide crime intelligence (what’s happening ‘on the street’) and analysis, and business continuity after an incident. The Waterloo BID (whose area covers a mix of hotels – chain small, and bijou – and businesses, a university, and the Imperial War Museum) is offering security training to businesses, ‘because that’s one of the things they came to us about,’ Karol said.
As Grant said of Edinburgh, security services given by a BID can enhance the area, such as clearing off graffiti, ‘gum busting’ (high-pressure removal of chewing gum off pavements, and providing bins), and tackling anti-social behaviour, to give a sense of safety to visitors and shoppers. Security against crime is among the Edinburgh BID’s priorities, such as specifically for high end jewellers. Grant hailed a police BID officer, ‘which has been an absolutely fantastic success’.
As with all things, it can take time for businesses to get involved; and there is apathy to overcome, and that those businesses inside the BID area may not even know it exists. But; they exist for a reason, and outside the UK too, as Chris Turner began by saying (some 1000 in the United States, and 50 in New York alone). While visibly the visitor to a BID area may see hanging baskets put up (and kept watered) by a BID, ‘clearly crime is an issue for most BIDs’, Chris said. He suggested that 65 per cent of British BIDs run a crime reduction partnership scheme; or a pub- or shopwatch scheme, and in the best-run BIDs ‘it’s phenomenally well joined-up’. That could include ‘street rangers’ trained by police; radio links for shops and pubs; and on-street video surveillance (typically and historically a service provided by local government).
“At best it really works well,” Chris said. Some, he added, don’t, whether because they are small (BIDs may only have one paid worker) or because retail (and its theft and other losses) is not a major part of a BID’s area. In the last couple of years, he went on, BIDs are starting to talk to each other, and having information sharing agreements with the police.
Then came the questions from the audience, given by Martin; first, from the City of London University criminologist Prof Emmeline Taylor, who has done research in this field. She asked about metrics; given that police crime statistics are deficient, are BIDs relying on police for theirs? Waterloo aren’t, Karol replied: “We take intelligence from our businesses and provide that to the other businesses in the area.” An example (as for other city centre areas) is bag theft. In Edinburgh, Grant said, Police Scotland provide stats, but by wards, which isn’t a match with the BID’s ‘bubble’. Over the years, he did add, it has become easier to get businesses involved (with passing on of retail crime intel, typically through the DISC, or Littoralis, software), because they can see the value in providing it (and getting others’ back as intel). But again as ever, more sharing which gives a higher number of crimes does not mean more crime is out there; only that it’s more talked about.
Martin asked Chris about how to know that a BID is making a difference on security (in a way, re-stating the metrics question). Officers (‘rangers’ or whatever they are called) talking to stores and linked by radio and to cameras means that more is picked up, and reported. Yet that has meant, Chris added, that one or two national big retailers can say, ‘why should retailers be involved in security, if BIDs are?’, BIDs after all paid with a levy of all those inside the BID area (that is, besides tax to government). Here was one of the major recurring questions around private security (and local government CCTV) – if it does a good job, that may prompt its disbanding (and security people losing their jobs), or for others in the vicinity to disband their set-ups. Chris Turner did not name those retailers who have ‘pulled out of the crime agenda’, just when retailers needed to put time and energy into it. He did add that BIDs weren’t there to sort out crime for a particular shop.
But to return to Chris, he made the point that police and BIDs alike who have been involved with their local crime data for years, even decades, know who the offenders are; ‘this isn’t an issue of thousands of people, generally of quite small groups of people; and BIDs are starting to share that detail among themselves.’ These offenders, he added, very often are troubled people, including veterans, who may need looking after by social services, and are stealing ‘for a bundle of reasons’.
As for how a BID and their local police can cooperate, Grant recalled the ‘beat cop’ for his BID began in 2018: “That gets you a seat at the table,” that is, with senior police. Small BID teams, Grant acknowledged, don’t have time to spare (and another reason for BIDs and others to share good practice?). in other words, personal commitment can hold back data sharing, not only the GDPR rules (or fear and ignorance of them). Meaning, to return to the panel, what BIDs do on crime can vary, from the amazing to nothing at all. Karol in passing made a remark that is a hallmark of Prof Martin Gill’s own criminological studies; that criminals share intel (about what works and doesn’t) when they are in prison; so why don’t the good guys?
About the panel
Karol Doherty began as security manager at We Are Waterloo late last year; he has worked for the flagship New West End Company, the London Oxford Street-centred BID, where he got a Met Police commendation. Grant Stewart, senior projects manager for the BID in Edinburgh city centre, has been in role since 2011. Chris Turner is the chief exec of the trade association British BIDs.
About the OSPAs webinar
You can listen to this and past webinars – run regularly since spring 2020 lockdown – at https://theospas.com/thought-leadership-webinars/. The next runs on Thursday, February 9, titled ‘the benefits and the dangers for the whistle-blower’. They’re free.
See also the fifth Thought Leadership Summit organised by the Outstanding Security Performance Awards (OSPAs) with the National Security Inspectorate (NSI), returning to the Royal Lancaster London on Thursday, February 23.
Photo by Mark Rowe; street art, Lower Marsh, near Waterloo station.
