IN FULL: City business chief's letter to Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner calling for action on city centre crime

The letter, addressed to Michael Lane, calls for more police presence in the city centre to help deter criminals.

Here is the letter in full:

Dear Mr Lane,

GO! Southampton is the Business Improvement District (BID) for the city of Southampton. Our organisation started work in April 2017 and has just reached the mid-point of its five-year term. We represent some 650 businesses in the city centre. There are now some 330 BIDs across the country in neighbourhoods, towns, cities and industrial estates.

As part of its ‘Great City Centre Experience’ theme, GO! Southampton committed to improving safety in the city centre, working in partnership with the Police and City Council. In our recent business crime survey, however, some 70% of respondents indicated that fear of crime was a significant issue, as compared to a figure of 13% in 2016. Moreover 63% of respondents indicated that, over the last 12 months, at least one member of their staff had been victims of assault. At the same time the Police’s own statistics are showing that Southampton’s crime rate has gone up for the fifth year in a row, is significantly higher than the average crime rate across similar areas in the country and is the highest in Hampshire. People will not come to the city centre to work, shop, eat or be entertained if is unsafe or perceived to be unsafe.

We believe that a key reason for this situation is the inadequate allocation of police resource in our BID area and, indeed, in the city as a whole. While we understand that the county will receive a share of the Prime Minister’s promised 20,000 new officers, we have no reason to believe either that a sufficient proportion of these will come to Southampton, nor that the total numbers will bring us anywhere close to 2009 numbers – a level that might be considered adequate.

We have begun to capture victim impact statements from our businesses to showcase the impact crime and anti-social behaviour is having on the workforce in the city, and to have it accepted as a priority by the police. I attach extracts from some of them with this letter. I am sure you will agree that they make for depressing reading. (We will be sending the signed originals to the city police.)

Our specific concerns are as follows:

• Violence (and the threat of it) against customer-facing staff. On a national level assaults and threats committed against the wholesale and retail sector increased almost three-fold from 524 incidents per 1,000 premises in 2016 to 1,588 in 2018 according to the Home Office’s Commercial Victimisation Survey (CVS). The British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) Retail Crime survey (2019) recorded more than 42,000 violent incidents across the industry in 2018. This equates to 115 shop workers being physically attacked every day, with many more verbally abused and threatened. The Co-op reports that, in the first 90 days of 2019, more than 2,500 incidents took place in their stores, 650 of which involved violence. Although business crime is not disaggregated any more in the statistics, there were some 97 incidents of violence and sexual offences in Bargate ward (which covers most of the city centre) in October 2019. In the city overall, as you know, there was a significant rise in serious violence in 2019, with a corresponding rise in the possession of offensive weapons and the exploitation of vulnerable individuals.
• Significant increase in shoplifting. In its impact statement a prominent takeaway says this is happening ‘about twenty times a day’ and that the perpetrators will not return stock when challenged.  Similar stories are wearily familiar to us. It is clear that a ‘tipping point’ has been reached, where criminals can act without fear of any consequences. One of our large national retailers has moved into the top 25 most affected by shoplifting countrywide, with stock loss now totalling £860k per annum – an incredible 2% of turnover.
• Massive degradation and decline in the overall street scene, including the following:

• Individuals openly consuming/injecting drugs in plain sight of shoppers, and then leaving the detritus behind.
• Uncontrolled begging, often aggressive.
• Rampant anti-social behaviour ("screaming, shouting and swearing").
• Intimidation of staff trying to challenge those blocking doorways and fire escapes

In the early days of the BID one of our board members, Parkhouse Jewellers, was forced to relocate to Westquay because customers were no longer willing to run the gauntlet of aggressive beggars.

As a BID we have an excellent relationship with our city police, to the extent that we are collaborating to organise a Serious Violence Conference for the city in February.  From the outstanding commander downwards, we believe there is not a single officer who is not fully committed to addressing the issues we’ve mentioned; however they simply do not have enough people to be effective. Specifically,

• The police often fail to attend reported incidents. A female staff member at a department store was assaulted by a shoplifter, causing a split lip and bruising. Although the offender was detained for twenty minutes, they were eventually released on police advice as no unit could attend. A similar incident is quoted in the impact statements.
• The police often fail to follow up on reported incidents. Another of our board member’s premises – a famous nightclub in the city – was recently subject to a break-in. Our board member gathered CCTV evidence, identified the perpetrators and even gathered blood samples. The cost of the damage was £20,000. The police failed to act.
• The police are rarely visible on city centre streets. This removes the only truly effective deterrent to the endemic ‘street scene’ issues mentioned above. We also find that repeat offenders are able to ignore banning orders with impunity.
• We encourage our businesses to report crimes/offences, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as they lose confidence in the police through perceived inaction.

In response to the level of crime the BID has been compelled to implement a number of measures of its own:

• We funded Operation Bulkhead and Operation Refract. Regrettably there were not enough officers willing to fill the overtime hours. 
• We appointed the former city centre sergeant to enhance crime reporting, target prolific offenders and improve relations between the police and our businesses. 20 convictions have resulted to date.
• Following unsuccessful discussions with Hampshire Constabulary as to our funding additional PCSOs in the city, we recently recruited three on-street security officers to complement our three existing street rangers. While we have resisted this step for a long time, it represents a last-ditch response to the lack of police. The security officers are intended both to reassure our businesses and to deter criminals.

All of these measures are expensive and deplete the resources available for positive initiatives, such as marketing, events, placemaking and animation. More significantly, as the impact statements show, inadequate policing levels are leading to significant loss of business, the degradation of the image of the city (including among cruise ship passengers and crew) and a barrage of complaints from customers and traders. It is hard to see how the city can make a bid to be UK City of Culture when it cannot even offer a decent city-centre experience.

The BID itself was balloted into existence in 2016 on the understanding that things would get better. The £6m-worth of investment we bring is under threat should businesses decide – in our 2021 renewal ballot – that there has been no meaningful response to rampant crime.

The national Serious Violence and Organised Crime Strategy in 2018 has, as a key objective, ‘building the highest levels of defence and resilience for businesses, removing vulnerabilities in our systems and organisations, and giving criminals fewer opportunities to target and exploit’. Until the levels of policing in the city centre are increased to 2009 levels we have no faith that this objective can be met.

I would be very keen to meet with you and senior officers to discuss these issues and to find ways in which, in partnership, we can move forward together to address them.