We’re delighted to welcome thirteen new customers and to announce  a further five new Disc systems for existing customers.

New customers include five Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) – Andover, Newcastle NE1, My Milton Keynes, Weymouth and Wimborne – and four independent Business Crime Reduction Partnerships – Romford Safe & Sound, Tunbridge Wells Safe Town Partnership, Canterbury District Watch and Drypool Business Against Crime in Hull.

Other new customers include two large pubwatches, in Wrexham, North Wales and Walsall in the West Midlands.

We’re also delighted to extend our presence among policing, with two new police customers, both of which have implemented Disc to support their rural crime reduction initiatives.

Existing customers who have added additional Disc systems to their existing implementations include Chichester Business Against Crime, Derbyshire Business Crime Reduction Partnership (to cover its Derbyshire Dales & High Peak area), Loughborough BID, and Harrow BID which has upgraded from its existing stand-alone Disc systems to Disc SC (for ‘segregated content’).

We’re delighted to announce our new Disc ‘Application Programming Interface’ (API). For major retailing and hospitality sector businesses that want to reduce the impact of low-level crime and anti-social behaviour on their businesses premises, it’s a game-changer…

The API means that incidents submitted into any third-party reporting system can be instantly copied into a local Disc implementation. So retail or hospitality multiples for example, with their own internal systems for reporting incidents, can copy them direct into local business crime reduction schemes.

That means that individual premises can participate in, and contribute to, local banning schemes which have been proven to be highly effective at reducing low-level crime.

Recent years have seen more and more major retailers adopt their own internal incident-reporting systems, and some have become less willing to report these incidents all over again into local business crime reduction schemes; understandably they find it hard to justify the time and expense of entering details twice.

The Disc API is a technical specification that allows any reporting system to copy reports seamlessly and automatically into any designated Disc system. There is no charge for use of the API and it is available to any third-party reporting system.

Says Disc’s Charlie Newman: “Some big multiples have built their own internal reporting systems; many of the larger guarding companies have their own, which they offer to their customers. And the National Business Crime Solution, whose membership is made up of many of the largest retailers in the country, has its own reporting system, iNTEL ONE for use by its members.

“We’re already working with NBCS to enable its members to report into iNTEL ONE, and seamlessly copy those reports instantly into any local business crime scheme that uses Disc. This means NBCS’s members and local crime reduction schemes both benefit, and mutually support reach other.”

Says NBCS’s Peter Fisher: “Interactivity between the NBCS’s iNTEL ONE and Disc is a no-brainer and will enable efficient, compliant and cost-effective data-sharing for the benefit of all.”

To receive a copy of the Disc API documentation email us at support@littoralis.com

October and November saw a record 15 new customers sign up to Disc. Among them: another police force has chosen Disc to support its rural crime reduction work; one of the UK’s top-10 security companies; an ‘industrial’ BID using Disc to reduce crime and ASB for its levy payers…

In the North East, Cramlington in Northumberland has invested in Disc to address night-time crime and ASB, with the support of Northumbria Police; the Yorkshire Coast BID – representing retailers and the hospitality industry from the Humber to the Cleveland Hills – has implemented Disc to support its levy payers.

To the west we welcome Lancaster BID, bringing the number of Disc systems in Lancashire to six. Meanwhile in the Midlands Kidderminster becomes the 16th Disc system in the West Mercia policing area.

The the south, Wimborne BID in Dorset has chosen to implement Disc, while a further Disc implementation in Cornwall brings the total number of Disc systems in that county to four. Bracknell BID, an ‘industrial’ BID supporting commercial and industrial businesses to the south and west of the Berkshire town, becomes the third industrial BID to implement Disc.

In London, Sidcup, Penge and Bexleyheath BIDs bring the number of Disc systems in the Metropolitan Police area to 31. Elsewhere in the South East, Slough BID in Berkshire has invested in Disc, becoming the 17th Disc system in the Thames Valley policing area; in Kent, Ashford Partnership Against Crime becomes the fourth Disc implementation in the county.

We’re also delighted that another police force has chosen Disc to support its rural crime reduction activity. More and more forces are looking to harness the power of Disc to help drive down countryside crime, showing that Disc is just as effective in supporting rural communities as it is in helping reduce low-level crime and ASB in towns and city-centres.

And finally, another of the UK’s top-10 security companies has chosen Disc to help it support its customers. It’s the third of the UK security industry’s top-10 companies to choose Disc.

Sharing information is a core function of business crime reduction schemes, whether it’s sharing urgent, important information between members, or enabling them to quickly, conveniently access images of local offenders and banned individuals. Now a new generation of radio handsets is set to support both types of communication in one powerful – and affordable – package.

Radio handsets with access to Disc

Some business crime reduction schemes (BCRSs) provide their members with mobile radio systems for sharing urgent, important information. At the same time, across the county, such schemes use Disc to share images of local offenders – as well as news, alerts, access to documents and information about up-coming events – with members on their own personal smartphones.

For some years now many radio handsets have been ‘Android-enabled’ (such as the Hytera device shown above) so they can operate either as radios or as smartphones. The devices increasingly sport smartphone-style large screens. So, like conventional smartphones, they can now display the Disc App.

That means the devices enable users to benefit from participating in local radio schemes – at the same time as providing access to their Disc system to access galleries of local offenders, alerts, news and documents, plus submit incident reports about low-level crime and ASB to their local Disc Administrator. Putting Disc onto the new breed of Android-enabled radio handsets is simple, and means users need only one device.

But setting up radio networks can be costly, and radio handsets can be expensive too. They may make clear economic sense for professional security officers or members who use the devices regularly.  But the cost may be more difficult to justify for smaller retailers or licensed premises who use the service only infrequently – and for the BCRSs that support them too.  Happily for them, a solution is now available.

Push-to-Talk over Cellular: linking smartphones into radio networks

Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PTToC) changes those economics.  Smartphone Apps have offered PTToC – providing many of the functions of conventional radio systems at a fraction of the cost – for many years now.  So why is it only now that PTToC has become a viable option?

Use of PTToC by BCRSs has been held back by two factors:  patchy internet or mobile phone coverage, and reticence on the part of conventional radio suppliers to promote systems which can be delivered at lower cost – and therefore lower profit.

But mobile phone coverage and access to WiFi is now virtually ubiquitous and robust in all but the most remote rural areas. And some radio suppliers, recognising the potential of PTToC, are moving towards offering PTToC faster than others.

Tom Ross is Managing Director of Foresolutions which has recently supplied a Business Improvement District with a flexible local radio system which links conventional radios with smartphones using PTToC (and delivers access to the BID’s Disc system on both types of devices).

Says Ross: “The options are so much wider and more practical now than they were, even a couple of years ago. And we can be much more flexible about how we can deliver radio-style communications to a BID.  So schemes can offer PTToC communications between levy payers who can opt to access the system through their own smartphones or through dedicated radio handsets.

“That means schemes can offer the benefits of a local radio network to a wider range of users – high-volume ones that perhaps can more easily cost-justify dedicated handsets, as well as lighter users who can simply use their existing smartphones. To be able to display Disc on either of them is an important additional benefit”.

Businesses that have to contend with high volumes of low-level crime and ASB will likely opt to use dedicated Android-enabled radio handsets; others with only occasional requirements can simply use PTToC on their existing smartphones.  And both types of devices can communicate between each other across the same network.

The fact that PTToC systems use the standard internet network means that setting up a radio-type communication scheme doesn’t involve costly aerials and repeaters, and the network itself is not vulnerable to any ‘single point of failure’.  “And expanding such a network is also easy” says Ross. “In fact there is no reason why a single PTToC network can’t extend right across the country.  So schemes that are keen to extend their areas of coverage can do so without any additional infrastructure costs”.

There are lots of basic PTT apps available for download onto smartphones – many of them free of charge for the non-business user.  But few offer advanced functions such as indoor and outdoor location, multiple channels, recorded video calling or group text messaging.  Neither do they provide the central control that conventional radio schemes need – for example managing membership of the network, disabling users when necessary, and seeing when users are online and active.

Says Tom Ross: “That’s where providers like ourselves can deliver flexible solutions which make the most of lower-cost PTToC at the same time as ensuring the overall control and management of the system by a BID or business crime reduction scheme”.

Intelligence@Work is our new online information resource for Disc customers and administrators who together deliver business crime reduction schemes across more than 500 towns and city-centres in the UK – and for anyone else who manages or supports business crime reduction schemes.

Intelligence@Work provides a wealth of news, guidance, documentation, and latest Best Practice of relevance to administrators and other professionals involved in business crime reduction schemes.

Intelligence@Work utilises Disc itself (of course!) to share information with its members, each of whom can access it direct from their existing Disc App or Desktop.

Intelligence@Work provides:

If you’d like to access Intelligence@Work – whether you’re a Disc customer or not – or if you’ve got something you think should be included in it, contact us now.

Helping new Disc customers to ensure their systems are set up in a compliant manner is part of the Disc implementation process. Now we’ve made this service available to non-customers too…

Business crime reduction schemes should know that compliance with GDPR is essential. Yet too many still lack key obligatory documentation.

We’ve long provided advice to all-comers on the subject: anyone can view our video webinar on Data Protection Law and Business Crime Schemes (watch it here) which should be obligatory viewing for Data Controllers of any organisation that processes personal data for the purposes of the prevention and detection of unlawful acts, or manages an exclusion scheme.

And we have a full set of ‘Model documents’ for customers and non-customers alike who wish to put together their own GDPR compliance documentation (contact us to request your own set).

Schemes that don’t have the necessary documentation in place – privacy notices, legitimate interest assessment and a record of processing activity – are effectively breaking the law and laying themselves open to complaint by Data Subjects – and their no-win, no-fee legal advisers.

At Disc we’re proud to call ourselves GDPR geeks. So we’re now offering not only our Model Documents to all-comers (free of charge, as always) but, for those who want to make the most of our expertise on the subject, we’re able to produce a full set of the necessary documentation specifically tailored to their own schemes for an all-in fee of £250. Since launching the service in May 2021, 18 schemes have already taken up the offer.

For more information on this service contact us now.

Since our previous eNewsletter in May, we’ve implemented ten new Disc systems including three in Cornwall and our first for Northumbria Police, to support a new business crime reduction scheme in South Tyneside.

From Cornwall to Northumbria…

Truro, St Austell and Penzance BIDs have each signed up with Disc to reduce low-level crime and ASB in their own areas – and link together across the county for cross-Disc information sharing. “We’ve been looking to establish Disc in Cornwall for some time” says Littoralis’ Charlie Newman, “so we’re delighted that three have decided to adopt Disc!” These join three other Disc systems already serving Exeter, Plymouth and Newtown Abbot, making a total of six Disc systems across the Devon & Cornwall policing area.

At the opposite end of the country, Northumbria Police has chosen Disc as its information-sharing platform for a new project supporting businesses in its South Tyneside district. Disc will initially be used to support retail crime reduction in South Shields. The hope is that it will extend its coverage across the wider South Tyneside area and ultimately, if the pilot goes well, across the whole force area.

“Northumbria policing area is unique” says Charlie Newman of Disc “in that the bulk of its population is in the major metropolitan areas of Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland, while the bulk of the area is across Northumberland itself – one of the must rural counties in the UK. Obviously we’re optimistic that, in time, the rural variant of Disc can be deployed here to address the special needs of rural crime reduction, as it is already being used in other rural areas in the UK.”

Burnley and West Brom

Burley BID in Lancashire and West Bromwich BID in the West Midlands have both chosen Disc to support their levy-payers. Burnley BID, managed by third-sector management company Groundwork, has invested in two linked Disc systems to support respectively its retail and night-time economies. These join existing Disc systems in Blackburn, Blackpool and Preston – creating the potential for a powerful information-sharing network across the Lancashire policing area.

West Bromwich Town Centre BID is the seventh Disc customer in the West Midlands policing area, along with Coventry, Kings Heath, Soho Road, Solihull and Wolverhampton BIDs, and the Bullring & Grand Central shopping malls which dominate the retail centre of Birmingham. West Brom will be using Disc to support the work of its Town Ambassadors who patrol the BID area six days a week and will enable the BID to support an Exclusion Scheme for its retail levy-payers.

More Disc for Mitie

Mitie, one of the UK’s leading security companies, has invested in its own Disc system to help share low-level crime and ASB intelligence among its customers. Its client Hammerson, the UK’s largest shopping centre company, already uses Disc to manage Exclusion Schemes in each of its malls across the country; Mitie’s investment in its own Disc system means it can access that information too, to help not only Hammerson but also its other retail clients.

New night-time systems for existing customers

“It’s a great vote of confidence in Disc when existing customers invest further in the product” says Charlie Newman, “which is exactly what Luton and Eastleigh BIDs have done”. Both have been supporting their retailers with Disc for some years and have now extended their role to support their local night-time economies. Compliance with data protection obligations has led each to invest in separate systems for the purpose. For them, a second Disc implementation proved more cost-effective than converting their existing Disc systems into a multi-scheme Disc SC system. Read more about Disc SC here.

More and more businesses are working together to ‘fill the policing gap’. Now we’ve developed three brand new Resource Packs to help them take the first critical steps. Whether you’re looking to set up a Business Crime Reduction Scheme (BCRS), implement an Exclusion Scheme, or want to understand how such schemes must comply with data protection law, make use of these free resources.

“We’ve had two free-to-view video webinars on our website since before the advent of GDPR in May 2018” says Disc’s Charlie Newman. “We started with our guide to data protection, and then added our webinar on how to set up a BCRS. Since then more than 400 individuals have viewed the videos. A number of attendees went on to set up new BCRSs, which is great of course.

“Last year we decided to revise the webinars, and develop a set of additional supporting materials for each of them which we’re calling ‘Resource Packs’. Now viewers of each webinar can request a PDF Guide which covers the same subject but goes into more detail, and includes links to useful third party resources as well as to ‘model documents’ – invaluable as the basis for producing necessary documentation.

“And we decided to launch a new Resource Pack, complete with webinar, supporting Guide and Model Documents, on how to set up and manage an Exclusion Scheme.

“We believe these Resource Packs – which are free for all-comers – can help fill a growing demand for more information on setting up Shopwatches, Pubwatches and Business Crime Reduction Partnerships” says Newman.

You can view the webinars free of charge, following which you can request your own copy of the relevant Guide and copyright-free Model Documents, on the Disc website:

• click here to view What is a Business Crime Reduction Scheme? How do they work?  How do you set one up?;
• click here to view What is an Exclusion Scheme? How do you set one up?  How do you manage them?
• click here to view Business Crime Reduction Schemes and Data Protection Law; the legal basis; GDPR; key documentation explained

Local business crime reduction schemes have been confronted with unparalleled challenges since the advent of Covid.  Yet new schemes, including Shopwatches and Pubwatches, continue to be set up while existing ones continue to develop, with new Disc systems and upgrades to Disc ‘SC’ (for Segregated Content).

New county-wide scheme for Derbyshire

Chesterfield Business Crime Reduction Scheme, managed by East Midlands Chamber of Commerce, has upgraded its existing Disc system to Disc ‘SC’ as part of its plans to deploy Disc across the entire county. Re-branded as the Derbyshire Business Crime Reduction Partnership, the scheme is well on its way to supporting towns throughout the county and Disc SC will enable it to support multiple schemes under one Disc system.

Fifth Disc system for Telford & Wrekin

West Mercia Police has invested in a further Disc system for its local policing area of Telford & Wrekin.  The police-administrated Disc system covers Great Dawley and joins (and links to) four other Disc systems in the area serving Wellington, Telford – retail and night-time – and Oakengates.

Two more shopping centres in Scotland

The UK’s largest shopping centre operator has confirmed the acquisition of two more Disc systems to add to its existing eight implementations.  The new systems, deployed at the company’s two Scotland-based centres, means that Disc now supports its entire portfolio.  Each system is locally administrated and supports local exclusion schemes within each centre, yet they are also linked together to help identify travelling offenders. We’re also working with the customer to link each of its own Disc systems with others in the same areas, so they can work together to share local alerts and other current awareness as well as the identities of relevant offenders.

Two new Disc systems for the Midlands

Highly regarded Business Crime Reduction Partnerships Leicester City Watch and Mansfield Business Crime Partnership have adopted Disc. Leicester City Watch is one of the longest established schemes of its sort in the UK; Mansfield Business Crime Partnership is managed on behalf of its levy-payers by Mansfield Business Improvement District.   Both have decided to migrate from existing information-sharing systems to Disc.

New Disc SC system for Gloucestershire Safe

Gloucester City Safe is a long-established Disc customer. Now Gloucestershire County Council has chosen City Safe to set up and manage a separate Gloucestershire Safe scheme based on a new Disc SC system to co-ordinate local government response to the Covid-19 pandemic throughout the county. The system has been deployed to support the county’s response to the pandemic by enabling efficient, effective sharing and recording of relevant information and to brief the county’s Covid-19 Marshals.

More upgrades to Disc ‘SC’

Our new Disc SC (for ‘segregated content’) upgrade is being adopted by more and more existing customers, enabling them to deploy multiple crime reduction schemes, while ensuring ongoing compliance with GDPR obligations. The last two months have seen customers including Cardiff Against Business Crime, Hastings Area Business Crime Reduction Partnership, Northamptonshire Business Crime Partnership, Norwich BID, Southampton Business Crime Partnership and Skipton Crime Reduction Partnership move to Disc SC.

If you’d like to know about Disc SC and whether it is a suitable option for your own scheme, contact us for more information.

We’re delighted to announce a wide range of new Disc customers this month, as well as more upgrades to our new ‘Disc SC’ system.

New customers include a brand-new independent business crime reduction scheme in Humberside, a fast-growing security services provider, a new county-wide crime reduction scheme for Sussex and a new Disc SC system to cover two BIDs in Derby city. Existing customers who have decided to upgrade their existing Disc implementations to Disc SC this month include Northamptonshire Business Crime Partnership, Derbyshire Business Crime Reduction Partnership and Southampton and Norwich BIDs.

Grimsby Retailers In Partnership – GRIP – is a brand new independent business crime reduction scheme set up with active support of Humberside Police, working closely with Freshney Place Shopping Centre.  GRIP has chosen Disc as its secure crime information sharing system.  It joins Hull BID as the second Disc system in the Humberside Police area.

Amberstone Security is one of the country’s fastest-growing security providers – and has selected Disc to share crime and offender information between its own staff as well as with its customers including some of the largest retailers in the UK.  Disc is already used for current awareness management by the National Business Crime Solution so Amberstone will not only be able to share data about relevant offenders with its customers but also seamlessly pass to them any relevant alerts and news items from NBCS.

The new county-wide Sussex Partnerships Against Crime group (SuPAC) which has been set up to extend access to business crime reduction schemes across those areas of the county not already supported by town- and city-centre schemes, has adopted Disc ‘SC’.  The system will enable SuPAC to create multiple self-contained local ‘shopwatch’-type schemes in smaller towns and across rural areas in the county.  SuPAC becomes the 13^th Disc system in Sussex, all of which can ‘cross-Disc’ publish news and alerts and also set up reciprocal links to help identify locally travelling Offenders.

The East Midlands Chamber of Commerce has used Disc to run its Chesterfield Shopwatch scheme since 2013. Two years ago the Chamber, Derbyshire police and local authorities combined to expand the scheme beyond Chesterfield to cover the entire county. This month East Midlands Chamber confirmed they will be upgrading their Chesterfield Disc system to Disc SC to support multiple schemes across the county. Derbyshire BCRP will also implement a new Disc system specifically to cover the Cathedral Quarter BID and the St Peters Quarter BID, both in Derby city-centre.

The new Disc ‘SC’ function (for ‘segregated content’) continues to win converts with more existing customers adopting the system – you can read about Disc SC here. Latest include Northamptonshire Business Crime Partnership (combining two separate Disc systems and implementing fully segregated schemes across the county); Southampton BID (using Disc SC to support not only its existing retail scheme but a new night-time scheme); and Norwich BID (combining its two existing separate Disc systems into their new single Disc SC implementation).

Find out more about how Disc is being used by other organisations here.