New crime reduction service for 'peripheral' and out-of-town businesses launched

Somerset West Businesses Against Crime (SWBAC) has launched its Safer Peremises Initiative. The new service extends its existing crime prevention and reduction services to new kinds of businesses, in new areas in the area.

SWBAC already runs a highly successful Business Crime Reduction Partnership made up of town-centre businesses such as retailers, pubs and and clubs. Its new Safer Premises Initiative (SPI) will help other kinds of businesses in the area - farms, factories, business parks, warehouses and utilities, as well as schools and churches. And instead of focusing on shoplifting and retail fraud, and on anti-social behaviour associated with town-centre pubs and clubs, SPI will be targeted at preventing and reducing crime in more peripheral, out-of-town and rural areas, and on criminal damage, plant and machinery theft, metal theft, vandalism, breaking and entering, perhaps joy riding and kerb-crawling and prostitution.

According to SWBAC's SWBAC Scheme Co-ordinator Andy Sharman, commercial crime costs the UK economy an estimated £12.6 billion a year. Not only does it have a negative impact due to the cost of replacing stolen goods, but it also impacts upon the profitability of businesses. In the current climate, businesses cannot afford to be out of action while replacement equipment is sought or repairs are carried out. SPI consists of two levels of membership, standard and premium. Standard members receive access to its secure information-sharing and weekly eNewsletter system, crime prevention advice, discounted training and an account with Immobilise, the free national property register. Premium members have the same benefits plus the additional benefit of SmartWater protection.

Says Andy Sharman: "This is the first initiative of its kind to look outside the town centre and offer other business sectors the support they need in preventing and reducing crimes against them. Working with statutory agencies and commercial partners, we have created the strongest available deterrent to help protect all businesses within the Somerset West district. It is through the co-operation of the partnership and business members that we can send a strong message that criminals targeting the area will find it a lot tougher to get away without detection." Why has SWBAC decided to offer this extra service to businesses? Says Sharman: "BCRPs have a more important role in reducing crime than simply running radio networks for retailers and banning trouble-makers from pubs and clubs. We need a means of extending our services, based on the experience we have gained over the years, to a wider but still local business community.

"We are addressing new issues with SPI. We are now working with businesses located in areas which, necessarilly, are less well-policed than town-centres and where CCTV systems are less helpful in identifying, and therefore detering, offenders. Quite simply, the chances of offenders being caught in the kind of areas which we cover with SPI are lower and therefore the need for this kind of approach is greater."

For the partnership - which is a not-for-profit organisation - SPI is an opportunity to extend its role more widely beyond the retail and 'hospitality' sector which is suffering from the current recession. "So it's doubly important for us as a partnership to have a more diverse product offering, to extend our services to new users. It reinforces our role in the local community".

SWBAC is the first partnership to take delivery of Littoralis' latest information sharing system, Safer Premises Intranet. According to Charlie Newman of Littoralis, it's a low cost, secure and highly efficient way of improving the two-way exchange between police and local businesses and other organisations. "It allows SPI members to report incidents online, browse images of 'most active' individuals, access listings of lost or stolen plant and machinery and much else besides. For the police, the intranet itself and the automated weekly eNewsletter system, are invaluable generators of excellent intelligence and provide a really effective communications platform with a community that isn't always so easy to communicate with because of its wide geographical spread."

For more information on SWBAC click here

For more on Safer Premises Intranet from Littoralis click here to see on online video, or here to visit the Littoralis website

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