New group to tackle business crime

The Government today claimed thousands of businesses would benefit from the creation of a new 'action group' set up to tackle business crime.

The Action Against Business Crime Group is a joint venture between the Home Office and the British Retail Consortium (BRC) which will work with local crime partnerships to build better links between businesses, police and councils.

The BRC has been successful in recent years in helping to set up various regional and local retail crime partnerships across the country. These groups have exchanged information about offenders with police, set-up radio links between stores and shared crime prevention advice.

The new Action Group will build on these local partnerships and hopes to extend them to include businesses other than retailers, a BRC spokesman told the NetRisk. It will also offer training and create links drug action teams and youth offending agencies.

The Home Office has granted £900,000 in funding to the group over the next two years.

Mike Schuck, assistant director at the BRC, said: "We accept the need to tackle all kinds of business crime, not just retail crime. The creation of a national association will help push forward more partnerships across the country."

Mr Schuck added that the Action Against Business Crime Group aimed to become self-financing by the time the Government money runs-out. This would be achieved through a mix of membership funds and corporate sponsorship.

Business crime strategy
Hazel Blears, Home Office minister for crime reduction, said: "The creation of the new national action group builds on work already underway to combat this problem. We launched a new business crime strategy earlier this year and are supporting more than 12,500 businesses through the £15 million 'Security for Small Retailers' scheme.

"We have created a dedicated business crime team at the Home Office and appointed business crime advisors in every region to help a wide range of businesses to combat crime. But we know there is much more work to do and we cannot do it alone."

The British Retail Consortium will take the lead in setting up the board of the action group and will appoint regional managers to lead the work in developing local partnerships.

Bill Moyes, director general of the BRC, commented: "The Government's funding of Action Against Business Crime will allow the partnerships to be extended to more towns and city shopping centres and car parks.

"We welcome this clear indication of the Government's determination to fight alongside retailers to tackle crime as part of a long-term strategy."

Johnny Thomson