West Mercia Police, with the support from their Police & Crime Commissioner John Campion, have invested in more Disc systems for the Telford area.

The latest system is support Madeley Town centre and joins stand-alone systems currently operating in Telford itself, Oakengates, Wellington and Dawley.

Disc is a unique crime information-sharing system that’s helping drive down low-level crime and antisocial behaviour (ASB) in more than 500 towns and cities across the UK. It empowers communities to ‘self-manage’ low-level crime and ASB, and enables police to work with them to deliver a new kind of effective, joined-up community policing. Each Disc implementation can link together into flexible networks to exchange crime and offender information locally, regionally or nationally.

Alexander Footman and his successor in post, Berwyn Pratt, have now overseen the implementation of a total of six Disc systems each deployed across a town in the Telford area.

Charlie Newman, Chief Executive of Littoralis says, “This is a great and effective way to deploy Disc across smaller towns. Using a single implementation to support individual  local crime reduction schemes not only brings professional levels of management but also ensures that all-important data protection obligations are complied with.”

He continues, “This latest roll-out of the Disc system means that there are now no less than 14 Disc systems at work across the West Mercia policing area, the largest rural force in England & Wales.  They join existing dual systems in Hereford, Shrewsbury and Oswestry, as well as the stand-alone systems in Bromsgrove, Worcester and  the six systems across Telford .  That’s a great achievement…congratulations to everyone involved!”

Disc is proud to have been selected as the online current awareness platform for the National Business Crime Solution (NBCS) and to play a key part in its services, not only to its members, but also to BIDs and other crime reduction schemes around the country.

NBCS enables the effective sharing of appropriate data between major retailers, the police and crime reduction schemes, and proactively targets criminality to reduce crime and risks to all. The not-for-profit organisation is funded by most of the major retailers in the UK.

Disc is delivering NBCS alerts to its members about travelling shoplifting ‘teams’, suspicious vehicles, ram-raiders, fraudsters and more. It helps NBCS send this valuable information to its members fast – the quicker it’s communicated the sooner they can protect themselves and their staff. It also provides NBCS with a simple, accessible yet powerful way to share its in-depth analysis, which helps not only protect against the impact of crime, but also assists in identifying offenders and bringing them to justice.

The information that NBCS provides to its members often contains personal data relating to known and unknown offenders. With its robust security provision and alignment with the key GDPR concept of ‘data protection by design and by default’, Disc is uniquely suited to the job. The system is already used by local retail crime reduction schemes in more than 450 towns and city-centres across the UK. For those BIDs who are themselves using Disc, alerts from NBCS can be automatically sent straight into their Disc Admin Centres so that sharing them with their members is a matter of a single mouse-click.

Charlie Newman, Chief Executive of Littoralis (the company behind Disc) explains “We have always been super-keen advocates of the NBCS. It’s always been obvious that a national information sharing system that links up retailers and police efficiently, means that both of them will become more effective in reducing business crime. It’s also obvious that local business crime partnerships have a great deal to gain from – and give to – such a scheme, and we’re proud to be helping build a closer, mutually supportive relationship between them.

“Looking ahead, we have a vision of the future which I believe aligns with NBCS’s. We’re delighted that they have put Disc at the heart of their business – but there is so much more that can be achieved and we’re looking forward to working with them on more exciting projects going forward!”

In early 2015, businesses and property owners voted to establish a Business Improvement District (BID) for the City of Hereford, with the principle aim of delivering investment and improvement to the commercial area.  Hereford BID signed up to Disc, the online crime reporting system and digital app, and with many local businesses continuing to sign up, the organisation says the area has never felt safer.

Disc is enabling retailers to be more vigilant in looking for criminal behaviour and the number of users is rapidly increasing. With an increase of 31% since January 2019,  more local businesses are actively helping to identify and report individuals involved in low level crimes such anti-social behaviour and the usage of fake currency.  With fake notes being commonly used by criminals to pay for small value items to gain genuine currency in change or to buy large value items which get sold on, it is a problem that many businesses face and one which can have a big impact on the profitability of many high street stores.

Now that businesses have access to the intelligence that the Disc crime reporting system provides and with Hereford BID working closely with the police, there is a real team effort in tacking such crimes, resulting in retailers not only being more aware but also more prepared.

If you would like a demonstration of Disc and to understand it’s benefits to local business communities and partnerships, get in touch today or book on to our of our upcoming webinars.