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The Business Crime Reduction Partnership (BCRP) between Hammersmith BID, Discover Fulham, Safer Business Network and H&F Council, has been working for over a year making Hammersmith and Fulham a safer place for our businesses to trade.
The BCRP has successfully served banning orders on 21 of our most prolific offenders, with 13 having served custodial sentences. A vital part of the BCRP’s work involves raising awareness about reporting business crime. It can be demoralising with perceptions of a lack of action from the authorities when it comes to this type of crime. However, because policing is now very data-driven, it is important to always officially report shoplifting, abuse towards staff or any other crime.
Reporting gives your business the best chance of receiving help from the Police, who will use that data to build up a case to put more resources in your premises. They can only do this if they have enough official crime reports and if there is an agreement on your part to support any prosecution of the perpetrator.
Simply put, if a crime is not officially reported with a crime reference number, then according to police data, it did not happen.
To help spread the message, Hammersmith BID and Discover Fulham have partnered to produce window stickers for our local shops and eateries, with the message “Report It, Support It”.
Report it:
Always report business crime to the police. You can do this easily online using the QR code below.
To make things even easier, the BID can provide you with a reporting pack which is a template document that saves time when reporting a business crime.
You can also see the guidance from the National Business Crime Centre on how to categorise the type of crime that has happened on your premises. You can see this by scanning the QR code below.
Support it:
You may be asked by the Police to provide a witness statement and if necessary, attend court if the perpetrator is arrested. You should always say yes or else the case will close. Rest assured that very few people who give a detailed enough witness statement are actually asked to attend court.
The BID will be visiting our levy paying businesses soon with the window stickers and we encourage you to put these somewhere visible in your shopfront and train staff to “Report It, Support It”.
In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact Hammersmith BID info@hammersmithbid.co.uk or Discover Fulham info@fb-bid.co.uk and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
