The National Business Crime Forum (NBCF) is to link with the National Business Crime Solution (NBCS), a crime intelligence platform which points to support from many UK businesses and the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC, formerly ACPO).
The NBCS has members from businesses including retail, wholesale, distribution and freight and in working with the UKs law enforcers has identified and disrupted a number of cross border crime teams by sharing intelligence across the public and private sector. NBCS says it’s led to the arrest of several cross border crime teams, as well as enabled businesses to better prevent and detect crimes against them through alerts and information sharing.
Both representatives of the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) and the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), with the other board members, support this move. Previously, various businesses and trade organisations lobbied the Home Office or the Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) about business crime.
Jean Mountain, representing the BCC said: “For many years various bodies have been competing for the same goals. The time is now right to simplify the landscape, consolidate organisations and best practice and present UK Plc with one route for crime reduction.”
And Mike Cherry, policy director at the FSB said: “We are now in a completely different place to where we were three years ago and the members of NBCF will continue to support the growth of NBCS. The NPCC welcome any business driven responses that work to address business crime, and we encourage any other bodies operating in this space to collaborate with the NBCS to maximise the public private intelligence sharing for everyone’s benefit.”
Nottinghamshire Deputy Chief Constable Sue Fish OBE, the NPCC Business lead, said: “As a result of the hard work of the NBCF, there is now a greater appetite to share information and best practice both within business and the policing community. The NBCF also helped facilitate single point of contacts within each force area, introduced primary authority status, piloted restorative justice initiatives, and led new standards for the local crime partnerships. This is a dramatic step change which will take the NBCF to the next stage of its journey. It is fitting because it successfully helped launch the NBCS solution, which is now a proven concept. Consequently, the direction of travel is towards greater collaboration between public and private bodies which will stimulate a greater call to action and results.”
