Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help reduce business crime.

We encourage retailers to join their local Business Crime Reduction Partnership (BCRP) or Business Improvement District (BID) to support local community efforts to reduce crimes, including business crime.

We are providing over £7 million over the next three years to support the police and retailers tackle retail crime, £2 million of which has been specifically allocated to the police-led National Business Crime Centre (NBCC). NBCC provide a valuable resource for both police and businesses to learn, share and support each other to prevent and combat crime. This funding will help tackle the crimes most affecting businesses today.

We also supported the recent Safer Business Action week (SaBA) organised by the NBCC. SaBA weeks are a joint initiative by police, business, private security, Business Crime Reduction Partnerships and Business Improvement Districts, who work in together and focus resources into a designated location, creating a significant impact to reduce crime.

The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will also ensure that every community in England and Wales will have named and contactable officers dealing with local issues, and that neighbourhood teams spend the majority of their time in their communities providing visible patrols and engaging with local communities and businesses. This will be supported by the delivery of up to an additional 3000 officers into neighbourhood teams by Spring next year, as part of our ambition to deliver 13,000 neighbourhood officers into police forces across England and Wales by the end of this parliament.

Additionally, the Home Secretary recently announced a “Winter of Action”, building on the success of our Safer Streets Summer campaign to tackle town centre crime including shop theft and anti-social behaviour.