Five simple steps your business can take to help create a safer community
Safer businesses help create safer communities. Whether you run a high-street shop, manage a warehouse, operate an office or own a small independent business, there are practical steps you can take to help prevent crime, as well as protect staff, customers and premises.
As part of Safer Business Action Week, we’re highlighting five simple actions that businesses can take to strengthen their approach to crime prevention and safety.
Crime prevention doesn't always require significant investment or major changes – often, it starts with understanding the risks and sharing information so everyone knows what to do should an incident occur.
1. Know how & where to report incidents
If your business experiences crime, anti-social behaviour or another incident that causes concern, make sure you know how and where to report it.
Reporting incidents helps ensure that the appropriate organisations are aware of what is happening. Even where an incident may appear relatively minor, recording and reporting it can help build a clearer picture of recurring issues, locations or patterns. Make sure your staff understand your organisation's reporting procedures and know where to go for support.
It can also be useful to keep an internal record of incidents, including relevant details such as dates, times and what happened. This information can help your business identify trends and review whether additional preventative measures may be appropriate.
2. Share information with other businesses & partners
Crime prevention works best when people work together.
If appropriate, share information about incidents and emerging concerns with neighbouring businesses and relevant local partners. Business Crime Reduction Partnerships, local authorities and policing teams can all play an important role in helping businesses understand and respond to local issues.
Sharing information can help businesses recognise patterns and make others aware of potential risks. It is important, however, that any information is shared in line with relevant data protection and information-sharing requirements.
3. Review your premises & security measures
Take some time to review your premises from a crime prevention perspective.
Consider how secure your entrances / exits are, whether lighting is effective, whether CCTV covers the areas where it is most needed, and whether alarms and other security measures are working as intended.
Don't just look at your premises from the perspective of someone who works there – consider how it might also look to someone looking for an opportunity to commit a crime.
The Retailers Crime Prevention Toolkit, produced by Police CPI on behalf of the Home Office, provides useful guidance to support businesses in keeping safe from crime and helping to prevent crime impacting staff.
For retailers, the NBCC's Ten Principles of Crime Prevention to Retail Crime is another useful resource. It provides practical actions that can be considered when reviewing security within a retail environment, with measures designed to be achievable, realistic and cost-effective.
You can also explore the various NBCC Crime Prevention Guides, which cover a range of business security and crime prevention topics. The guides are designed to provide practical advice and can also be used as quick reference resources or conversation starters with employees.
4. Support your staff
Your employees are an important part of your approach to crime prevention.
Make sure staff know what to do if an incident occurs, who they should report it to and where they can access support. This is particularly important for situations involving aggression, threatening behaviour, theft or anti-social behaviour.
Regular conversations and short training sessions can help keep safety procedures fresh in people's minds.
It’s also important to ensure staff understand that their personal safety comes first. Crime prevention measures should support employees rather than encourage them to put themselves at risk.
5. Build relationships locally
Good relationships can be one of the most valuable crime prevention tools a business has.
Get to know other businesses in your area and find out what local support is available. This could include your local policing team, a Business Crime Reduction Partnership, local authority, or other business network.
Regular communication makes it easier to raise concerns, share information and work together on solutions.
Crime prevention is most effective when it is collaborative – by building relationships before an incident happens, businesses and partners are better placed to work together when a problem does arise.
Turning prevention into action
Safer Business Action Week is a great opportunity to take a fresh look at your business and ask a simple question:
What could we do today to make our business safer?
It might be reviewing your reporting procedures, speaking to a neighbouring business, checking your security measures or making sure your staff know what to do if something happens.
There is no single approach that will work for every business – the right measures will depend on your premises, location, activities and the risks you face. What matters is taking the time to understand those risks and putting practical measures in place to reduce them.
Safer businesses don't happen by accident. By taking practical steps, sharing information and working together, businesses and their partners can help create safer places for everyone – not just during Safer Business Action Week, but throughout the year.