The potential risks threatening any vibrant and well-visited area are regularly highlighted to us, particularly in the current climate.
Recent criminal and terr or events that have taken place thr oughout the UK and in particular London, have shown the need for an area to be well protected, not only by the police and security services, but also through well-planned, safe urban design.
The Perception Analysis demonstrated that businesses wanted a stronger relationship with safety providers and a provision of safe and secure activities. Therefore, the BID can play a vital role in developing strategic priorities that can address both day-to-day activities such as homelessness, anti-social behaviour and street begging. The BID is also able to work with groups such as Safer Neighbourhood teams and Counter Terrorism teams to offer tools for safeguarding, while encouraging distribution of resources and preventing such incidents from occurring in the future. The Hatton Garden BID will keep the ar ea safe and secure by:
- Grouping/ bringing together businesses, security officers, and key statutory bodies to look at intelligence, initiatives and best practice.
- Continuation of BID ambassador scheme to collate intelligence and report issues where needed, reacting quickly and proactively.
- Work with developers to encourage designing out crime at initial planning stages and to prevent over concentration.
- Foster positive community relations.
- Build on successful crime prevention surgeries and initiatives such as Safe and the City scheme and business intelligence sharing scheme.
- Ensure best practice through police and
business engagement.
- Offer high level business advice on areas such as business continuity, counter terrorism, fraud and economic crime.
- Touting is a stressful and ongoing issue for many businesses within the Garden and is not a problem that can be solved alone. Although work has been taking place to reduce this, much more needs to be done including stronger awareness campaigns, more targeted witness statement collections and stronger lobbying for enforcement.