The August 2011 riots hit retailers and retail destinations across the country. What can be done to lessen their impact in the event of a recurrence?

Westfield Stratford City is the first UK shopping centre to be presented with a prestigious award from ‘Secured by Design’ for the design and construction of the 1.9m sq ft retail and leisure destination, due to be the largest urban shopping centre in Europe and gateway to the Olympic Park when it opens on 13th September 2011.

In June 2011 ROI Team polled more than 100 shoppers in The Square, Birmingham about their attitudes towards anti-social behaviour in shopping centres.

Managers must act to prevent a downward spiral in service standards in secondary centres, writes Sam Olsen.

A new personal video camera provides added protection for lone workers.

Initiatives involving partnerships between shopping centre management and security teams and the police can have dramatic results in fighting retail crime.

In response to demand from retailers, shopping centre management and car park operators Samsung has introduced the SND-3080C a network dome combined with a customer counting tool for both security and marketing uses.   

Security services for the Ropewalk Shopping Centre in Nuneaton have been newly-contracted to Leicester-based Premier.

Unibox have launched a high security sliding door system for their glass and aluminium display units.

The Scottish Business Crime Centre has released the Violence Reduction Handbook - designed to help staff reduce the threat of violence in retail environments – in conjunction with G4S Secure Solutions.

Siemens has long been a leading supplier of security equipment, but in a significant change of direction it is now looking to position itself not just as a supplier of technology, but a supplier of solutions.

What rights do shopping centres have to stop the public taking photographs in the malls?

With new civil liberties concerns being raised about the use of CCTV, how can centre owners ensure their systems comply with best practice?

Meadowhall has become the first centre to roll out a new communications system that also monitors the location of site staff

Courts could take over empty units in shopping centres in a bid to speed up the justice system, according to the Magistrates' Association.

Security staff at the Eastgate Centre in Basildon, Essex, have been granted powers to fine people for littering.

Almost one in 10 retail employees have committed a crime against their employer in the last 12 months, according to new research published by G4S Secure Solutions UK (G4S).

Manned guarding is an essential aspect of mall security. But centres are involving another set of eyes and ears: those of the retailers themselves.

This month’s publication of the Retail Crime Survey 2009 has revealed the true impact of recession on UK crime levels

There’s no denying that CCTV systems are a vital part of shopping centre security. Technology improves on a yearly basis, providing clearer images and digital formatting. But CCTV, regardless of its quality, is not enough to prevent and deter crime. Centres need people feeding information from ground level if they want to root out trouble makers for good. While accredited security guards are one form of manned guarding, several centres are putting some of the responsibility into the hands of the retailers.
     When management at The Thistles Shopping Centre in Stirling reviewed their CCTV security system, things weren’t running as smoothly as hoped. The contractor, Shopsafe, was managing the radio link system remotely via civilian CCTV operators. But according to centre manager Colin Moulson, this was all a little too remote – to the point of being virtually inactive.
“This system had become more and more ineffective due to it being both poorly managed and monitored by the contractor and the civilian operators,” he explains. “Consequently, it was not creating the deterrent environment that a system of this nature should. We couldn’t move forward with it because it wasn’t good enough value for our retailers. They would contact the control room and get no answer.”
The controversy surrounding service charges has prompted management and landlords to demonstrate its value to their tenants. This was a tough call when only 30 out of The Thistles’ 95 retailers signed up to the old security system, lowering its value for the centre as a whole. “It was part of the service charge: retailers were paying for it so it should have been working. Word got round and there was little confidence in the system.”
After researching other options, Moulson and his DTZ centre management team introduced a radio scheme last February, monitored and managed in-house, which every retailer is now involved in.
“In effect it became ‘mandatory’ for our retailers to participate,” says Moulson, adding that although this sounds risky, the outcome is well worth it. “Making subscription compulsory is a risk and it did put some retailers off at first. But we wanted to be able to say to our tenants: ‘Here’s what we’re doing for you.’ It’s a very good box to tick considering the current problems. Shopping centres aren’t the cheapest place for retailers to be trading, so we wanted to show them the benefits of being here.”

networking
What separates the current system from the old is that it connects every retailer via radio link not only to the control room but to each other. Sales staff throughout the centre can listen to incoming reports from other stores and keep a lookout for people matching the descriptions.
“The impact was clear from the very first day,” says facilities manager Scott Wells. The morning after the new system went active, a team of professional thieves had been making their way around the centre’s major fashion operators.
“A message went round on the radio, and the sales team at Ernest Jones heard the descriptions and caught them walking past their store with hundreds of pounds of stolen goods,” says Wells.
And in another example, a neighbouring shopping centre had been hit with fraudulent vouchers. The security team at The Thistles passed on a description of the vouchers through the radio link, and retailers were able to recognise and refuse them.
“It would never have worked with CCTV because we wouldn’t have got a description of the vouchers, or been able to immediately pass information around to everyone,” adds Wells. “Our current system works because it involves a network of people. We still have CCTV in place but we can’t rely on it.”
A closer look at the crime figures seems to back up Wells’ claims. Between January and July 2008, staff reported 569 thefts at the centre. After launching the new system, the number of reported thefts rose to 950 in the first six months of 2009. Whether the recession has impacted on crime levels or not, this is a vast difference and most likely the result of a better security system, combining CCTV with people on the ground.
“Technology is moving at a rapid pace, but you can’t beat people communicating with each other,” asserts Moulson. “We needed to get something that we were far more in control of and the speed with which retailers and the security team react is amazing. Every retailer in the centre knows within minutes when there has been a crime.”
Retailers Against Crime (RAC) – an information sharing initiative across Scotland, Northern Ireland, North East England and Cumbria – has been involved in the Thistles Partners Against Crime project. The idea behind RAC was to build a national database enabling every shopping centre in the country to identify known criminals and professional teams. Moulson is keen for his centre’s retailer initiative to be rolled out in this way. “Retailers Against Crime has seen a lot of benefits from our scheme and is very interested in getting other centres to do something similar.”
Another pioneer in retail crime prevention, Rubie Charalambous, has been working on the multiagency initiative NBIS (National Business Information System) since it’s launch in 2008. Originally set up as a scheme for town centre managers, NBIS is now used in over 60 towns, cities and shopping centres. It has affiliates in local authorities, councils, police forces and shopping centre management.
Charalambous launched the initiative as town centre manager at Walthamstow to root out crime and anti-social behaviour in the area. Local businesses pay for the software package – a radio link system provided by Hicom – and communicate reports of crime or anti-social behaviour. Any time an offence takes place it is recorded on the system, and every subscriber can listen in to police interviews and descriptions of the criminals.
“Historical information is built up of a known offender, such as whereabouts he is operating and what he is doing at any given time. We can track these criminal because we are all connected,” explains Charalambous.

Leading the way
And at the epicentre is The Brewery in Romford, where the system is housed. “This is the first time a shopping centre has been able to take the lead and influence how security works in the town centre,” asserts Charalambous, who is currently centre manager at The Brewery and chair of NBIS. Her impetus seems to derive from experience dealing with local authorities – “councils are notoriously slow” – and wanting to capture the movements of criminals across the country.
“It’s the first model of it’s kind,” says Charalambous. “Other centres, like Bluewater, have self-contained security systems. These are great, but the difficult bit is getting centres to talk to each other. Some just aren’t interested because it means going outside the normal way of working.” But she is confident that, with The Brewery leading the way, other centres will follow on.
“The package is affiliated by Retailers Against Crime and goes through another organization, Action Against Retail Crime, so it’s completely authentic. It puts everybody in touch with everybody else.,” Charalambous continues.
“The police are not solely responsible for lowering crime levels – we all need to support each other in this. While the initial outlay is expensive, it’s nothing compared to the amount businesses might end up losing in stolen goods.”
The next challenge for Charalambous is a nationwide rollout. “Since the downturn began, we’ve seen a rise in different groups of people committing retail crime: the elderly, for example. Criminals aren’t as obvious anymore.
“But NBIS gives you a whole range of statistics that you wouldn’t get otherwise. Police collect figures on big crimes, but not crimes in retail. With information collected from people in the stores and businesses, police can check our reports alongside their own and put two and two together.”

The number of retail thefts by customers rose by a third in a single year, and violence and abuse against staff doubled, according to the British Retail Consortium.
The findings, published in the Retail Crime Survey 2009, identified significant reversals in the reduction of crime over the last five years. According to the report, there was a 10 per cent rise in the total cost of retail crime in 2008/2009 with UK shops paying £1.1bn in damages  – the equivalent of 72,000 retail jobs.  
Customer theft accounts for the biggest share of all retail crime, both by the number of incidents (94 per cent), and by monetary value (42 per cent). The survey recorded 498,405 incidents – around eight per cent higher than the five-year rolling average. However, for the first time the BRC survey also assessed the proportion of retail crimes not reported to the police. The 60 retailers that took part estimated half of all customer theft goes unreported, bringing the real level of theft into the region of 750,000 to one million incidents in one year.
The value of each theft has continued to fall, averaging at £45 a time, as retailers improve the protection of high value items. Mixed retailers, DIY and hardware stores, in particular, experienced worse than average customer theft.
Another disturbing find was the doubling of violence against retail staff compared with last year. At least 22,000 staff suffered physical or verbal attacks or threats, with the overall level of recorded incidents running at 20 per 1,000 staff members. The BRC notes that the actual figure is likely to be higher as a good deal of abuse goes unreported.
Last year’s downturn prompted over half of retailers to invest more in crime prevention and security, with an average spend per store of £13,950. Despite this extra spend, the number of burglaries was up by a third and robberies almost doubled. The research shows burglaries increased to 21 incidents per 100 outlets, reversing a five-year downward trend. But as with customer theft, the value of an individual robbery was down by 61 per cent on last year to an average cost of £2,077.
In another reversal of fortunes, criminal damage more than doubled reaching 47 incidents per 100 outlets – the equivalent to nearly half of all stores being affected – ending a nine-year drop. However, only a third of incidents were reported to the police, again highlighting a worrying discrepancy between police recorded crime and crime experienced by retailers.
While some put the rise in customer theft down to financial hardship, BRC’s director general Stephen Robertson refuses to let the recession to be used as an excuse. “The increase in retail crime during the recession can’t be justified as a move from ‘greed’ to ‘need’. Whatever the motivation, shoplifting is never victimless or acceptable. The cash costs are met by honest customers who end up paying more and the human costs by shop staff who intervene,” he said.
 “It’s shocking that a shop theft happens almost every minute, 24 hours a day. We need tougher sentencing to deter thieves and more consistent use of fixed penalty notices between police forces. Too many fines for shoplifting remain unpaid.  We need more effective enforcement so they aren’t devalued as a deterrent.”
 Based on the findings in this survey, the BRC has compiled a list of recommendations with a major focus on better engagement between police and local shops. Retailers should be genuinely involved in setting local crime priorities and treated as key partners in the community.
The BRC also calls for more police focus on tackling serious and organised crime against businesses, and better co-ordination of offences that cross police boundaries.
Robertson added: “The police and criminal justice system must take retail theft more seriously. There’s been some progress but, with a fifth of retailers saying they don’t report crime because they have no confidence in the police and two thirds of shop thefts going unreported, not enough.”

On April 7 2008, Andrew Ibrahim, a former public schoolboy who converted to Islam, carried out a reconnaissance trip to the Mall shopping centre in Broadmead, central Bristol. During his time there, Ibrahim is reported to have wandered around making notes on his mobile phone, apparently recording the locations of rubbish bins and timing how long it would take to walk between them. On July 17 this year, the 20-year old A-level chemistry student was found guilty of planning a terrorist attack on the Bristol shopping centre. The evidence against him was overwhelming – Ibrahim had been watching videos of extremist preachers and suicides on the internet and at his home a half-finished suicide vest was found.

As crime levels rocket as a result of the recession, CCTV remains one of the key weapons in a shopping centre's arsenal, as Hannah Prevett discovers

Security teams need to up their game during the downturn, discovers Hannah Prevett

With the ever-present threat of terrorist action, of which we have seen examples only too recently, planning for the unexpected forms part of the essential management of any large site or building, in particular where considerable numbers of people may be gathered.

Croydon in south London is officially the worst location for stock loss or 'shrinkage' caused by theft, according to the Retail Loss Prevention Fashion Forum.

Having been retained by Guarding UK in March to assist in growing their business in the shopping centre and related markets, I took a pace back to investigate what people in all parts of the shopping centre industry - operators, managers and owners - really want from a security provider.

Security at the Elephant & Castle shopping centre in south-east London has improved in leaps and bounds over the last four years, thanks to the high level of commitment from centre manager Mike Knell and the centre's dedicated security team.

The bomb explosion at Princesshay in Exeter this May was another reminder to the shopping centre industry that retail businesses are at risk from terrorism.

They're known as the Coventry Falcons. They're not a football team; they're not rugby players. Their game is stealing people's identities from offices. They look very presentable, wear jackets and ties, perhaps. But they will sneak into your business, dip into unattended handbags and jackets, and take purses and wallets. Leaving your premises, they clone the credit cards using equipment in their vehicle.

A marked improvement in the quality and provision of security services has been reported by shopping centre managers following the regulation of the private security industry in the UK.

According to the police, some 80 per cent of CCTV footage is of such poor quality that it cannot be used as admissible evidence in the event of a prosecution. Clearly, it would be extremely costly to install high resolution cameras throughout a shopping centre, but at the same time, only having access to poor quality images instantly negates a vital function of CCTV: the positive identification of suspects.

New forms of retail crime, an evolving terrorist threat and the changing nature of shopping centres themselves all mean that retail schemes are having to constantly review their security.

Choosing the right CCTV system can be a minefield for shopping centre managers as technology continues to evolve.

A Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year is something we all wish for at this time of year, but statistics prove it's going to be anything but. False alarms triggered by stray festive trimmings placed too close to sensitive security detectors are going to test the patience of over-stretched and under-resourced police officers.

Ensuring you have a good communications system in your shopping centre is important. If retailers, security officers and centre management remain in constant contact, then incidents such as shoplifting, lost children or violence can be dealt with quickly and efficiently, without delay.

Town centre-wide security communications systems are a common tool for combating crime in the UK, enabling retailers, shopping centre owners and the police to work side by side towards a common goal.

In the current climate, security has an essential role to play in protecting our safety, assets and ultimately our freedom to go about our daily lives. In spite of this the appointment of a security provider is becoming more and more price-led, to the detriment of the security industry and you, its customers.

With terrorism in the country here to stay, retailers and shopping centre managers are having to up their security in a bid to keep consumers visiting the shops. But the key to preventing terrorist attacks is firstly to attempt to understand terrorism.