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New start for NABCP

by Mark Rowe

‘We start today’ was the rallying cry at the re-launch of the National Association of Business Crime Partnerships (NABCP) on Friday in Stoke-on-Trent, writes Mark Rowe.

Those were the words of David Wilson, the former policeman now of Mansfield Business Improvement District (BID). He, and fellow experienced business crime partnership managers Julie Davies (of Partnerships Against Business Crime In Staffordshire, PABCIS) and Lisa Perretta (Brighton and Hove Business Crime Reduction Partnership, BCRP) have been at work on reviving the association since December, when the old NABCP was wound up as a company. It’s started again with the same name, but that’s the only thing that’ll be the same, the meeting of BCRP managers and others interested in business crime, such as retailers and police, heard.

Exciting times

As we reported David saying in our May 2018 print issue, these are exciting times for BCRPs. A proposed accreditation scheme for BCRPs, setting minimum standards, will matter not only for those running such partnerships, but for high street retailers who pay for membership of such schemes around the country. One of the speakers, Staffordshire Police’s head of neighbourhood and partnerships Chief Supt Jeff Moore, put his finger on the crucial, and indeed historic problem. As he said, those in the room have probably had experience of how partnerships are excellent … ‘when you have committed individuals’ who run them. When those people move on or for whatever reason the funding stops, the partnership work drops off. Such work is all about relationships. The need, and a theme of the morning event, is for consistent standards, so that everyone knows what good practice in a partnership looks like.

What’s a BCRP

That requires, as the event heard, such basics as agreeing what the definition of a BCRP is – is it any shop or pub or store-watch scheme, a BID offering businesses a shop radio network? Nor, even 20 years after partnership work was set out in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, does anyone know even how many BCRPs are out there. One of the speakers, Max McPartland of the police’s London-based National Business Crime Centre (NBCC), offered the total of 269. National retailers have long grumbled that they pay to be members of partnerships in each town and city, and some offer better value for money than others. Julie Davies made the point that it’s for retailers and police to take a consistent approach too, to pull up the under-performing BCRPs. The NBCC (not to be confused with the National Business Crime Solution, which was among attenders) is seeking to be a ‘one-stop shop’ of advice on business crime. As Professional Security has reported over the years, plenty of good work is happening – exclusion orders against persistent shop thieves, community resolution workshops to show first-time young offenders the consequences of their shoplifting, which does work – but does every BCRP know all they can do?

What Staffordshire do

Chief Supt Moore set out how police in Staffordshire are working with the county-wide BCRP, which is based in a ‘resolution centre’, the new idea in policing of handling crimes over the ‘phone. Businesses will be able to upload CCTV images to police, that police will be able to search, besides their own database.

What next?

It’s proposed that Secured by Design will look after the accreditation of BCRPs; that’ll take assessors going to partnerships. Fifteen people have registered an interest in being assessors. The NABCP organisers would like a (voluntary) standards board, and elected regional chairs. NABCP goes live again as a company this month. More on BCRPs in the June and July 2018 print issues of Professional Security magazine.

Pictured at Stoke: left to right, Max McPartland (National Business Crime Centre), Paul Cox (Bath), Lisa Perretta (Brighton), Alan Dann (Kent), Julie Davies (Staffordshire), Ian Tumelty (Wales), David Wilson (Mansfield), Steve Lang (Northants).

Photo by Mark Rowe.

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