Commissioner Ian Dyson's second blog

My sincere greetings to you once again and I am delighted to write my second blog as National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for Business Crime. This gives me the opportunity to update you on some key initiatives and progress that is being made by the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC) in partnership with UK police forces and businesses nationwide.

The NBCC recently supported an event held in London by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, where I was delighted to provide the opening address. The event, ‘Stay Safe at Work’, was designed to identify the key areas to develop a charter for businesses to reduce violence in the workplace. The event was also supported by unions such as Unison and USDAAW as well as various academics. I was especially pleased to see such a variety of groups come together to tackle the issue of employee safety and found the event informative and well attended. More work will be progressed on the charter and, as always, please keep visiting and sign up for all updates.

Working directly with employers is a theme this month, which only serves to underline my ambition for policing and the private sector to work through these challenging times together. The NBCC recently attended a national Employee Supported Policing meeting on the 8th May in Manchester and are supporting the programme by sharing contacts and providing access to various business groups. The initiative is also going to be publicised on the NBCC website.

I opened the second annual Citizens Academy, a ground breaking initiative involving senior external stakeholders, which the NBCC run in partnership with U.S. Homeland Security. This year attendees from Amazon, British Airways and Rolls Royce are amongst those representing multiple sectors, contributing their experiences of business crime, whilst learning about policing responses so as to bring about positive change from both sides. This type of innovative exercise really aids in partnership working and I will be excited to see the feedback at the end of the 8 week programme.

I have also met recently with Helen Dickinson, Chief Executive Officer of the British Retail Consortium, and discussed the results of the their latest national survey and highlighted areas that police and businesses can tackle together. This included improving police data to be more reflective of the abuse and violence reported by surveys such as that undertaken by the BRC and the NBCC are looking at ways of making online reporting easier for businesses and I will hopefully be able to update you on progress made in my next blog.

The NBCC team and I are always keen to hear from you and any ideas you may have. There is ‘Contact us’ section on the NBCC website and I am genuinely interested in your thoughts. I want to drive forward significant progress over the next 12 months and will devote a lot of attention to not only how to make the NBCC sustainable but also how we can continue to grow our relationship with businesses nationwide.

I look forward to hearing from you and connecting with you once again soon

Ian Dyson, City of London Police Commissioner
NPCC Lead for Business Crime

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