St Albans City Centre BID reached out to Hertfordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Jonathan Ash-Edwards to visit the city centre during this week.

Vivien Cannon, BID Manager said, “We work alongside many agencies to share resources and information in support of our businesses. Safety & Security is one of our work objectives and we recently launched the Disc intelligence gathering system which allows businesses to legally share and inform each other of who to watch out for and what the current criminal trends are. This information can also be useful to our Police teams and crime reduction partners.  We want Jonathan to know what we are doing so that it informs his current research and survey on business crime.”

Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner Jonathan Ash-Edwards Jonathan visited the city centre on Thursday 17th and met with BID, Council and Police representatives. He accepted invitations to meet with local business owners to hear what crime concerns they had. This gave Jonathan the opportunity to ask businesses to complete the Business Crime Survey https://bit.ly/Herts/PCCBusiness  results of which will inform the creation of the Police and Crime Plan and direct resources and actions over the next five years.

Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner Jonathan Ash-Edwards said: “It is vital to our local economies that they have thriving town centres and that people who work in and use the retail outlets and shops feel safe. The message must go out there to those who are intending to commit theft, fraud and other criminal acts that robust action will be taken. I welcome the work of the local police officers in St Albans who are acting with the BID, local council and other partners to target the criminals and reduce crime.”

Superintendent Patrick Holdaway lead for the National Business Crime Centre said, “The Safer Business Action initiative is coordinated nationally but is very much focussed on local crime and ASB issues impacting retail and other businesses in the community. It is as much about engaging with businesses and the public as it is about identifying and catching prolific offenders. The SaBA events have seen some fantastic results in targeting those who cause the most harm to businesses and also in building ongoing relationships between business, partners and the police.”

Vivien Cannon continued, “Campaign weeks such as this serve to galvanise communication to our businesses and the public. Having the attention of our PCC and being able to talk to him directly helps everyone understand the array of issues that businesses deal with and their impact on the city centre.”