Bournemouth BBRC gains Safer Business Award for fourth time

Bournemouth Business Reducing Crime (BBRC), which was created in 2002 and is based at the Avenue shopping centre, has again been successful in obtaining the Safer Business Award with distinction at their recent accreditation.

The partnership Crime manager Kevin Strudwick said, “We are delighted that the partnership has been recognised for its hard work, which has been assisted by Dorset Police and a number of other organisations. The whole idea of BBRC is to make the town centre a safer place to shop and relax for our many tourists and residents.  We work in partnership with the police, PCSOs, town centre rangers, rough sleeping and sea front services teams as well as local bus companies.

“We operate a strict ‘first time’ exclusion scheme and currently have over 300 people who are excluded for periods of up to 12 months.  That may appear to be a lot of people, but because of our location and the very large number of visitors and students who come here, we do attract a significant number of offenders. We want to send out a strong message that stealing from our retailers does have a consequence.”

The average cost of a shoplifting offence in the town, calculated from statistical information provided to the partnership from retailers who have reported offences to them, is over £80, with many offences costing far more.  The partnership works closely with CCTV, which is controlled by police from Bournemouth police station, and this has shown its value, not only in identifying shoplifters, but also identifying other offenders or people of interest to the police.