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AABC national conference a great success
The AABC national conference which took place at the Radisson Blu hotel at Manchester airport on 29th April with over 110 delegates and seven exhibitors was a very successful event with positive feedback from delegates who described it as interesting and informative with many useful contacts and exchanges with other delegates.
The key address was made by the chairman of AABC, Lord Dear ,who announced the name of the new organisation when ATCM's Business Crime Initiative is merged with AABC - it will be called the Association of Business Crime Partnerships - ABCP.
Work is underway to ensure that the new organisation becomes operational in the near future with no disruption to our services or additional cost to members. Non-member BCRPs will be invited to join the new organisation and benefit from the recognition that will bring.
Lord Dear also announced the creation of a service level agreement with members of the Fashion Forum which will help BCRPs deliver an agreed standard of service and which will help retailers to support BCRPs actively at local and national level. Richard Lawrance of Monsoon and the Fashion Forum, in his address, stated that this was an important development in building confidence and closer working relationship with funding members and will provide points of contact for BCRPs with contributing retailers.
AABC has been working with the University of Central Lancashire and Kent Police to create a vocational qualification for partnership crime managers and other related personnel and Lord Dear announced that a positive outcome was likely in the next few weeks. He stated that it was important to recognise the professional nature of BCRP work and that the VQ would help to raise standards and provide acknowledgement of our work.
ACC Allyn Thomas of Kent Police, the ACPO business crime lead, gave a far-reaching presentation, looking at future policing and partnership work and welcoming the creation of one national partnership body which would manage a national accreditation process based on AABC's Safer Business Award. This would provide police forces with an accepted standard for involvement with BCRPs. He pointed out other areas such as industrial estates, out of town retail and business areas where partnership could play a valuable part.
There were also presentations from Manchester, Swansea and Rhondda, Cynon, Taff BCRPs, the National Fraud Authority, the National Counter-Terrorism Security Office and the Information Commissioner's Office, and a big thankyou to those speakers and to all those who supported the conference as delegates, speakers and exhibitors.
The final event of the conference was the presentation of the Partnership Excellence Awards, supported by Professional Security Magazine. There were two categories this year and the finalists are as follows:
Partnership Innovation
- Winners
- Taunton Retailers Against Crime for their No Arrest policy
- Highly Commended
- Swale Safe for their partnership expansion and development programme
- Commended
- Milton Keynes Partners Against Crime for their juvenile intervention project
- Brighton & Hove BCRP for their restorative justice scheme
The Taunton Retailers Against Crime full report can be downloaded from the Partnership Good Practice page of the AABC website.
Promoting Community Safety
- Winners
- Bradford City Centre Beat for their Student Safe Spot Initiative
- Highly Commended
- Taunton Retailers Against Crime for their youth involvement programme
- Commended
- Cherwell Crime Partnership for their partnership expansion and development programme
- Bexleyheath Town Safe for their partnership expansion and development programme
31 August 2010
16 August 2010