The Northampton Retail Crime Initiative (NRCI) was set up in 2001 with council funding and the support of Northamptonshire Police, to tackle business-related crime and anti-social behaviour in the town. The NRCI ‘model’ is now one of six local partnerships which cover every part of Northamptonshire, under the umbrella of the Northamptonshire Business Crime Partnership (NRCP).
The NRCI runs an ‘Exclusion Scheme’, banning persistent offenders such as shoplifters from its member premises. Police share data and custody images with the NRCI and provide access to the Northants Police intelligence system (NICHE) under an Information Sharing Agreement, and provide their daily crime summary.
In 2012 the council transferred its funding role to the newly-elected Northampton Business Improvement District (BID). Two years later, after a recognition of the need to reduce spending, the BID withdrew funding from the NRCI. Left to rely on income from members’ subscriptions, the NRCI had to downsize, reducing its staff to one; Scheme Manager Denise Ellis. Members meanwhile felt a growing gap in town centre policing, and a rise in low-level retail crime. Temporary Chief Supt Mark Evans asked Sergeant Steve Lang, shortly to retire after a 30-year police career, to look at options. Evans joined the NRCI Board as a non-executive director.
Increasing revenue by raising the NRCI’s membership charges risked reducing the number of members; which had already contracted to around 120. But how else could the NRCI deliver on service?
Steve Lang says: “Clearly we needed to look at radically different ways of working, to enable the NRCI to deliver a higher level of service at a lower administrative cost-per-member. If we could do that, Denise Ellis and I both believed there was great potential for building a fully self-sustaining business model which could deliver the Board’s vision.
“We knew of a number of online tools which offered to reduce the cost of managing image albums. We researched the options and after hearing good things about the DISC system from Littoralis, we took a closer look. What really impressed us with DISC is that it offered cost-savings that went far beyond the management of image albums; it provided a range of tools to address other important tasks more efficiently and at a lower cost, including membership management, compliance with Best Practice and the all-important Data Protection Act, the management of ban expiries and much else.
“It also enabled members to interact more efficiently with Denise by sending in incident reports online, and for Denise to communicate far more immediately and directly back to them – not just about offenders and banned individuals but about relevant news and urgent ‘Alerts’ as well as easy online access to documents and information about upcoming NRCI meetings and other events.
“What really sealed it for us was that DISC could not only deliver enhanced service levels to NRCI members in Northampton at a lower cost-per-member but the same system could do the same for other schemes irrespective of their geographical location. We felt we had identified the right online management system with which to deliver the Board of Directors’ vision.”
Re-boot funding of £60,000 would cover the cost of new staffing at the NRCI, implementation of DISC, and running costs for two years. The Board approved and supported the application to the office of the Northamptonshire Police & Crime Commissioner. Steve Lang joined the NRCI in May 2015 as Business Development Manager. A pilot in six stores ran DISC in parallel with the existing printed image albums. Response was positive, so the scheme launched the system across Northampton in July 2015. In October 2015, the NRCI created a new ‘umbrella’ body, the Northamptonshire Business Crime Partnership (NBCP). In August 2017, they launched the Rushden Lakes and East Northants Retail Crime Initiative, centred on an out-of-town shopping centre.
The number of incidents reported by members through DISC has grown. In 2016 members submitted a total of 1,704 incident reports online; in the first nine months of 2017, 2,200. The partnership is now operating entirely free of public funding. In October 2016, the NBCP was one of the first DISC users to enable its members to ‘escalate’ appropriate Incident Reports (that hadn’t already been reported to the police) into ‘crime reports’ and send them, with optional ‘MG11’ Witness Statements direct to the police ‘101’ line. DISC helps Northampton police to concentrate its ‘101’ resources more efficiently by ‘load balancing’. Staff can process DISC-delivered reports during low traffic.
As for CCTV, few retailers have the time or patience to transfer footage from their internal CCTV system into a separate online crime reporting system; fewer still are prepared or can afford to wait while very large digital files are uploaded. Working with the police, each Retail Crime Initiative in Northamptonshire now has its own collection hub (a secure cabinet usually in a shopping centre) where retailers deposit their CCTV footage in police-supplied tamper-proof bags..
On the future, Steve says: “As every town or city in the country knows, most low-level retail crime is committed by a relatively small number of well-known offenders with chaotic lifestyles. The social care system is struggling – and if we can contribute, then that’s where I’d like to see NBCP going, with help on jobs, rehabilitation, training and so on, to break the drink/drugs-crime-drink/drugs-crime cycle.”
For the case study in full visit the Littoralis website.
Pictured: Northampton town hall.
