On The Road with the NBCC Team in April 2026

April has been another busy month for the NBCC Team despite both Lisa and Titus taking some leave.

Firstly, we are really pleased to welcome Rachael Rowlands who joins the Team from Surrey Police. Rachael brings a wealth of knowledge and experience having worked in the retail crime world for a number of years. She also has a passion and in-depth insight around offender management, addictions as a crime driver and out of court solutions which she will be focusing on and we are pleased to say she has hit the ground running. Watch out for updates on her work over the coming months.

In mid-April Lisa attended the National Convenience Show at the NEC where she was involved in a panel discussion with Supt Steve Fosher and Anton Volpe from National Counter Terrorism Security Office and Andrew Goodacre, CEO of the British Independent Retailers Association during which they spoke about the safety and security challenges in the retail sector and highlighted good practice for managing these issues including latest advice, guidance and reporting mechanisms. The following week, she provided an update to the Retail Crime Advisory Group which is supporting the Tackling Retail Crime Together strategy. Later that week she headed to York to speak at the North Yorkshire Retail Crime Symposium organised by North Yorkshire Police before closing the week by visiting the London Stock Exchange and attending City Forum Safeguarding the Nation event to discuss how UK Security and Guarding firms can collaborate and work with police to make our communities safer. As part of NBCC’s remit linked to the Home Office funding the Team is pivoting into the world of tool theft and tackling the second-hand markets for stolen goods. As part of this work at the end of the month Lisa hosted and chaired a ‘roundtable’ event looking at Tool Theft bringing industry and policing leaders together to agree a road map for tackling the problem going forward. The conversation was enthusiastic and engaged with work streams identified going forward…. More on this to come.

Titus, has spent most of the month providing briefings on the national picture and promoting the joint national retail crime strategy – Tackling Retail Crime Together. This included separate presentations to the Police and Crime Commissioners for Hampshire and Kent during which he provided a national view. If you would be interested in being involved in the following work streams; What Works, Offender Management or High Harm Places or could support the gathering of What Works best practice in particular the work your company does or security products deployed in store that work please email titus.halliwell@cityoflondon.police.uk . At the end of the month he attended The Security Event at the NEC Birmingham which provided a great opportunity to network with old and new companies focusing on the prevention of retail crime.

Finally, The NBCC Knowledge Series has continued to provide briefing inputs to UK Retail Crime Policing SPOCs on the following subjects: Sophie Jordan spoke about the work the National Association Business Crime Partnerships does. John Unsworth talked about how the Tackling Retail Crime Together strategy is evolving. Lastly Chris Nriapia gave an overview of the SentrySIS retail crime platform and the work they are doing with UK PAC. If you would like to present at a future addition of the series, please reach out to Titus using the email address above.