THE NATIONAL Business Crime Centre (NBCC) is holding a national week of action to support businesses and reduce business crime across the country. The week of action runs from Monday 17 October and involves police forces and partners working together to hold targeted operations in towns and city centres, running high-profile media and social media campaigns and engaging with local businesses, retailers and the community in a determined bid to raise awareness of business crime.
The City of London Police, which plays host to the NBCC, is holding a Safer Business Action (SaBA) Day to deliver a focused operation featuring joint patrols, the targeted intervention of offenders and a range of crime prevention activity. The latter includes raising awareness of local issues with members of the general public.
SaBA Days represent a joint approach by police, business, private security, Business Crime Reduction Partnerships and Business Improvement Districts working in partnership to focus resources into a designated location and create a significant impact that leads to crime reduction.
Partnership working and days of action are all part of normal activity for police forces and their partners. Although locally based, SaBA Days bring with them a national reach. Through the SaBA Steering Group and the NBCC, there are links to a national network of contacts. Best Practice can be shared and extra resources from private businesses with a national footprint may be able to assist with a given event.
Bringing police and partners together
Superintendent Patrick Holdaway, lead for the NBCC, said: “The week of action is an opportunity to bring police and partners together to tackle the key issues of business crime in their communities. Each police force taking part will be holding various crime prevention activities and initiatives designed to increase engagement with local businesses and retail outlets and tackle some of the most prolific offenders.”
Businesses trading on High Streets and in town centres are also encouraged to become involved and display the ShopKind messaging in their stores. All of the ShopKind materials are free to download online.
Edward Woodall, the ShopKind campaign’s co-ordinator, stated: “We encourage all businesses to support the national week of action and share messages about ShopKind with their customers and colleagues.”
The NBCC social media channels on LinkedIn and Twitter will have updates of the activity taking place throughout the week.
