In our May print issue, we report on ‘exciting times’ for business crime reduction partnerships (BCRPs). One aspect of that, to be detailed at a conference in Stoke-on-Trent on Friday, May 18, is accreditation of BCRPs.
The police National Business Crime Centre (NBCC) is seeking organisations that would be interested in providing accreditation to standards.
This matters far beyond the actual BCRPs, which have been on high streets for more than 20 years. As the NBCC says, businesses pay into BCRPs and police want to encourage continued and further investment. Businesses have long wanted to know however that they are getting value for money from good partnerships (and by implication hold poorer-performing BCRPs to account).
Meanwhile BCRPs report that different police forces engage with them to varying degrees; hence the NBCC will promote better working between police and partnerships. By demonstrating that accredited partnerships meet the national standard NBCC can give police forces the confidence to ‘dare to share’ data about known offenders, typically shop thieves, and act on the information they receive from BCRPs. The aim; a ‘culture of collaborative working’, says the NBCC. The NBCC will host the standards board and “own” the standards. It will make the standards publicly available so that BCRPs and businesses can refer to them and accrediting bodies can assess against them. Standards will means that there is a reference for what ‘good looks like’, police say.
The NBCC is working with Secured by Design (SBD) to establish a process whereby BCRPS can obtain SBD accreditation.
Downloadable from the NBCC website is the self-assessment Word document for BCRPs, which covers governance, communications with members, systems and procedures, aims and objectives, and (above all) data integrity.
For more on the May 18 event, click here.
