A United Front Against Business Crime: Delivering Results Through Partnership
Business crime remains one of the biggest challenges facing high streets across the UK. Retailers and hospitality venues are dealing with repeat offenders, organised groups targeting high-value goods, and staff facing abuse simply for doing their jobs.
But while the challenge is significant, the response is becoming stronger than ever, and the key is partnership.
Across the country, collaboration between businesses, Business Crime Reduction Partnerships (BCRPs), and policing teams is delivering tangible results. By sharing intelligence, coordinating enforcement and building stronger case files, partners are not just responding to crime, they are actively disrupting it.
At the heart of this approach is Safer Business Network, working alongside police forces, Business Improvement Districts and retailers to make information sharing faster, investigations stronger, and outcomes more effective.
Why collaboration matters
Retail crime is often underreported. Individual stores may recognise repeat offenders, but without intelligence sharing those individuals can simply move between locations and continue offending.
Partnership working changes that dynamic.
By bringing together information from businesses, local partnerships and police, crime patterns become clearer and offenders become easier to identify and disrupt.
Superintendent Lisa Maslen of the City of London Police, who leads the force’s National Business Crime Centre, highlights the importance of this kind of collaboration.
“Safer Business Network gives retailers confidence in policing and reporting incidents. That's crucial because we know retail crime is very much underreported, but for us to understand the issue and allocate resources to the right places, we need to have a full picture of what's happening.”
This shared picture allows policing teams to focus resources where they are most needed and to build stronger cases against prolific offenders.
A recent Operation Ashburton case highlights exactly how effective this collaborative approach can be.
Operation Ashburton is led by the Metropolitan Police’s Forensic Image Identification Unit (CIIU), working with organisations such as Safer Business Network to identify offenders responsible for multiple retail crimes
During a joint viewing event with the Safer Business Network team, investigators reviewed a series of thefts linked to one high street retailer. Images connected to the incidents had been available on police intelligence systems for over a year but without a confirmed identification.
Working alongside the police, Safer Business Network staff were able to identify two suspects connected to the theft series.
Even though facial recognition technology could not confirm a match, as both suspects had worn hats in the incidents, the partnership intelligence proved crucial.
Police investigators quality-checked the identification and submitted it as intelligence. Through the Project Morrison process, the intelligence was converted into a direct identification supported by a witness statement.
This allowed the investigation to move forward quickly.
The suspect was arrested and has now been charged with:
- 53 theft offences with specified values
- 1 theft offence with an unknown value
The total recorded loss linked to the offences is £130,304.50.
Police have also linked the suspect to additional theft offences, while a second suspect connected to the case remains wanted.
This outcome demonstrates the direct value of intelligence sharing between businesses and police. Without partnership identification and coordinated investigation, these offences may have remained unresolved.
Turning intelligence into action
Cases like this show how collaboration turns fragmented information into actionable intelligence.
Through platforms and partnerships managed by Safer Business Network, businesses can quickly report incidents, share suspect images, and contribute to evidence packages used by police.
This creates a cycle where reporting leads to intelligence, intelligence leads to enforcement, and enforcement prevents further offending.
Superintendent Maslen emphasises the value of this model:
“The crime prevention services Safer Business Network offers are so bespoke to businesses and there are very few people out there doing that. This is a first-class model.”
Building safer high streets together
The success of initiatives like Operation Ashburton shows what is possible when organisations work together with a shared goal: safer town centres for businesses, staff and customers.
For businesses, this collaboration means greater confidence that incidents they report will lead to real action.
For police, it means stronger intelligence and evidence to target the most harmful offenders.
And for communities, it means safer, more welcoming high streets.
As business crime continues to evolve, one thing is clear: tackling it effectively will always require partnership.
When businesses, policing teams and organisations like Safer Business Network work together, the results speak for themselves.
Find out more about Safer Business Network and what they do here, Safer Business Network | Creating Safer Towns and Cities through Effective Partnership and Collaboration
