The headlines don’t make pretty reading: crime levels are soaring and shopping centre owners are under pressure to slash service charges. However, despite initial grievances over cost, technology has a vital role to play in the shopping centre management team’s battle against would-be criminals.

The perception many shopping centre proprietors have of new technology is that it is going to prove costly both in the short and mid-term. “The difficulty always is that when you’re introducing new technology you’ve not only got the cost of implementing, the capital cost, but you’ve also got the training costs for the employees who will have to operate it,” explains Martin Taylor, chair of the BCSC Security and Safer Shopping Committee.

The age of a shopping centre is a crucial factor in how much works needs to be done, and how it will be financed, says Taylor. “If you’ve got a very modern, sophisticated, newly opened centre, a lot of that capital cost is already accounted for; it’s when you’re trying to introduce it into an older centre it is more difficult.”

One element of security technology shopping centre managers have adopted in their hordes is CCTV cameras. This comes as no great surprise of course, given that there are more CCTV cameras in the UK than the rest of Europe put together. “In most shopping centres, CCTV is in place and by and large, it is run to a pretty high standard,” comments Taylor. However, perhaps what the market needs is a little ingenuity, a step away from the obvious options.

Reliance Security Systems offers a full range of security services – from front line security personnel to technical aids to help managers fight crime in their schemes. But often the ingenuity comes not just from the technology point of view, but the way in which people are using it, says Peter Jones, chief operating officer at Reliance. “We’ve got technology which the initiated would see as just being a way of evidencing a patrol has taken place, but in truth there is no real value in this. It’ll also design variations for the patrols and its GSM format means you can transmit the data anywhere, on a live basis.”

G4S also has some innovative technology offerings. Through its partnership with CAPIndex, the world leader in crime forecasting, G4S has been able to produce online Crimecast reports, which give the risk of crime at any given location. The report includes a visually striking map and a breakdown of risk categories, which include violent crime, theft, and crimes against property, and are benchmarked against regional and national averages.

“The measurable statistics can be used to allocate your security budget effectively, particularly if you are responsible for a number of centres, and to justify to key stakeholders where your budget has been spent,” reports Andy Lane, managing director of the regional guarding division of G4S.

That said, CCTV remains a popular choice among shopping centres, especially when additionally bolstered by the physical presence of security guards. The presence of security guards and extensive CCTV coverage sends a message to both would-be criminals and customers, says Reliance’s Jones. “Rather than seeing it as a big brother operation, CCTV actually improves customers’ perception and confidence that the responsible and capable management is in place to make sure that their experience is the one they want it to be.”