Kent Police have agreed to part fund the upgrade of 16 Business Crime Reduction Partnerships across the county, from the Business Information Crime System (BICS) to the National Business Information System (NBIS), from software firm Hicom.
Kent Police have contributed to the deployment of NBIS to 16 of their Business Crime Reduction Partnerships (Ashford, Canterbury, Chatham, Dartford, Dover, Folkestone, Gillingham, Gravesend, Hempstead Valley, Maidstone, Margate, Ramsgate, Sevenoaks, Sittingbourne, Tunbridge Wells, and Hythe), plus two systems to be located at their police headquarters, to access and disseminate data to partnerships.
Over the last few years, towns, cities and shopping centres in Kent as around the UK have been establishing retail and business partnerships, to identify persistent offenders, exclude them from their businesses and where appropriate obtain Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs).
Alan Dann, Project Manager Kent Police said: "We have a proactive network of business partnerships in Kent and the benefits of data sharing and targeting offenders using BICS has been very successful. We see NBIS as the next logical step – providing a valuable contribution to the process of gathering information and intelligence sharing.โ Hicom report that NBIS is designed to link crime reduction partnerships and is allows sharing of data nationally on a live and proactive basis via a Virtual Private Network, to track and monitor persistent offenders, including those with ASBOs.
Hicom add that NBIS/BICS is now used in over 70 places throughout the UK, in 23 police regions. By the end of August, over 30 of the locations will be linked via NBIS. It is anticipated that between September and December, existing BICS users and new users will be adopting NBIS, increasing users by a further ten locations.
In other news, Northamptonshire Action Against Business Crime (NAABC) are to deploy NBIS across the county, covering six partnerships, including Northampton, Corby, Wellingborough, Kettering and Daventry. In addition, two terminals are to be based at Northampton Police headquarters and CCTV control room. Dudley Borough Business Crime Partnership has selected NBIS. The West Midlands boroughโs partnership was established in July 2003 and has 140-plus members from the daytime economy. The partnership like others are looking at extending their services into the night-time economy which will substantially increase membership and the recording of incidents. Having recently taken over the radio system for Dudley, the partnership has a view to upgrade and expand to cover other towns. The areas covered by the Dudley Business Partnership are defined by police divisions and include: Dudley, Merry Hill, Brierley Hill, Sedgley, Stourbridge , and Halesowen. And Bedford Town Centre Company have selected NBIS.
Hicom Business Solutionsโ NBIS has been short-listed in the British Computer Society Technology Awards. In November, Hicom plan to hold a seminar for the users of BICS & NBIS. Speakers will cover national data sharing.
