Anti-crime partnerships top 100 mark for AABC

Action against business crime (AABC) has beaten the targets it was set by the Home Office on formation two years ago. In total, the organisation – itself a unique collaboration between the Government and the British Retail Consortium – has now formed 106 crime-busting partnerships at a cost of less than GB pound 8,500 each.

Marking the initiative’s second anniversary on Friday 1 September, AABC chief executive Mike Schuck told SMT: “We have genuinely managed to create a unique system of partnerships in this country which is the envy of visitors from overseas. Increasingly, those crime reduction projects are being linked to our national database, which is now providing real-time intelligence on business crime to both retail security and loss prevention specialists as well as the police service. We are now extremely keen to develop the partnership system, and also increase our ability to contribute to crime reduction and community safety in the future.”

Business crime reduction partnerships are structured membership organisations. They share information on crime and criminals via radio links, CCTV and photographs, and by agreement with the police. They also use exclusion notice schemes, banning known thieves and troublemakers from the premises of all members in a given partnership.

To create each partnership, AABC had to convince organisations including businesses, the police and local authorities that the best way to deal with town centre business crime and disorder is to work together in a cohesive and co-ordinated manner.

Before AABC began in 2004, it had taken nearly a decade to create the first 100 partnerships. The rapid expansion achieved since then means that there are now over 200 business collaborations across England and Wales, and over 30,000 members of the business fraternity involved.

The partnerships are all self-funding and “here for the long term,” according to AABC’s chairman Lord Dear. “What we have managed to do in just two years represents a really tremendous achievement.”

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