Before you start reading please note that this is bit of a ‘beast’ article, but there is so much good detail that it’s worth reading through. However, it is broken into clear manageable chunks if you want to skip through. You are of course entitled to provide your own feedback and ask questions of any member of the Taunton BID steering group, and we encourage that.

BUSINESS PLAN SECTION: ‘Making Taunton Safe & secure’. (page 16. £15,000/yr)

Credit: BID’s & business crime: A manifesto, by the NBCS.

Here’s what Taunton BID are proposing, their headline ideas, and underneath bullet pointed are some suggestions of what you may want to consider when analysing the ideas presented. You are of course entitled to provide your own feedback to and ask questions of any member of the Taunton BID steering group, and we encourage that.

The Safer Somerset Business Partnership (SSBP) introduced a DISC scheme to Taunton early in 2019. This new scheme has been moderately effective in reducing the levels of crime and antisocial behaviour in the town centre, but this issue remains a priority for businesses in Taunton.

Stronger together to fight crime.

‘Work proactively with the Safer Somerset Business Partnership (SSBP) to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour in the town.’ ‘Work with’ means what? There is nothing stopping the businesses being a member of or working with SSBP now if they are concerned about stock loss and security.
Look to subsidise membership fees for BID members to encourage increased membership of the SSBP and the DISC initiative. It will also look to fund radios where there are noticeable gaps in radio coverage through funding a small number of radios in strategic areas of the BID. That superfluous ‘look to’ promise again as keeps popping out across the Business Plan, so they might look at something, but might not take any action. So how much are they budgeting for membership fees? Will all the current SSBP / DISC members get subsidised, what are the criteria for subsidising businesses? Where are the noticeable gaps and strategic areas of the BID, have they consulted security experts to identify if there are any such gaps / areas, and if so, has a radio proposal costed. All these things are what a good BID business plan would do.

Report crime.

Proactively encouraging businesses to report crime is good, but shouldn’t businesses be doing this already anyway, and it costs nothing to encourage. As for providing training for staff and managers in reporting theft and radio use, this bit of feedback we had from a voter sums our view up nicely; “If I gave one of my staff a radio I’d make sure they were trained to use it, are they really saying there are businesses handing out security radios without training people how to use them? So I’m going to have to pay because another shop can’t be bothered to train their staff on kit they give them?”

Bridge the gap between daytime and night time economies.

So BID want to encourage daytime businesses to extend their trading hours to 'bridge the gap' between the day and night-time economies; to reflect consumer lifestyles and improve security. Yet more ‘encouraging’ which costs nothing, and BID effectively want late night shopping every day, really? Besides increasing overheads with the BID levy, have BID actually thought through what they’re asking of firms, to incur extra costs like staff wages to stay open even longer? Do BID really want to tell small self employed independents who work hard enough already, to be work even longer hours? Where is the evidence from other towns this suggestion works, or is it just another idea plucked from the air without thought? Also later opening hours doesn’t necessarily improve security; have you ever wondered why criminals like it when it’s dark outside?
In partnership with the Night Time Economy and the Council, the BID will seek to attain Purple Flag or Best Bar None status for the Night Time Economy. Have BID even checked off a list of requirements to attain this, so it is even realistic? From what we understand the are factors out of BIDs control such as transportation infrastructure which will make it hard for Taunton to achieve an award such a Purple Flag. Also, when was the last time you thought, “oh I must go to XYZ town because it has a Purple Flag”? Have the Council already agreed to partner with BID on this? As with everything above, they just want to say they are doing something and in this case get a token sticker to prove their existence.

Budget considerations: £15,000

The small budget speaks for itself, a token amount they don’t even really know what they will spend it on given no costed plans in their ideas above. It represents just 5.3% of the overall budget, 4th in size for what their own survey shows is the 2nd highest priority topic, just 1/8th of their survey’s highest priority budget (Events at £120,000), and only just a bit more that the bottom 2 priorities that get £10,000. Looking at other BIDs whilst considering Taunton’s town centre big crime problems and the solutions required, perhaps at least 25-50%+ of the budget should have been allocated. The amount certainly varies from town to town depending on crime situation and how much a priority it is for BID businesses, and it’s interesting that Weston-Super-Mare BID spends 60%+ of it’s budget on crime. So considering Taunton’s significant crime problems, it just seems weird BID are giving it such a low Business Plan priority by way of budget, without a properly costed and tangible crime solution deliverables.

The Taunton BID crime scandal

The above is our responses to BID’s business plan ideas on crime, but the real scandal here is how Taunton BID have basically decided to ignore the massive crime problems Taunton town centre has, and how their voting businesses really feel about crime, which has evidently led them to doing basically little more than nothing under Safer & Secure. As the following image shows, we can even prove that month before their Consultation period opened to learn what their BID businesses really wanted, the BID Steering Group had already decided themselves not to do much on crime, totally dismissed upfront the idea of any increased policing, and come up with a token headline solution, just to make it look like they’re doing something on crime.

Click image to expand, and there’s more information on this later in this article post.

To develop the crime theme further, first let’s provide some evidence of how bad Taunton’s crime problems really are:

state of crime evidence 1: 2019 CRIME RECORDS

The following article cites the 11 Somerset towns reporting crimes between January & September 2019 (so during BID’s “consultation phase”), and which town to you think managed to get 1st place for most crimes - you’ve guessed it, Taunton! Not exactly the accolade we want, but stark evidence, and the highest number of crimes were in the town centre.

Click on the image to link through to the original article (opens in a new window).

Here’s what this crime article released November 2019 said about Taunton:

Topping our list, with a massive 5,052 reports of crime between January and September.
The month which saw the highest reported crime figures for Taunton, was March, with 606 reports.
Violent and sexual assaults, anti-social behaviour and shoplifting were prominent around the town in this month.
(referring to just September) Station Road had 13 reports of crime, North Street had 10, as did Fore Street, and East Street 12. Shopping areas, such as the Iceland on High Street which saw 32 reports of crime, all had high numbers of recorded incidents, as did the Esso petrol station on East Reach.

state of crime evidence 2: our own council did a review in early 2019

In March 2019 Taunton Deane Borough Council published a task group report titled “review into crime and antisocial behaviour in Taunton Town Centre”, and a copy can be downloaded here (opens in a new window). This is quite a damning report about the state of the town centre developed with evidence from many stakeholders, and remedial solutions are recommended. Read the full report for yourself if you’d like (and we wonder whether Taunton BID even bothered reading it), but here are a few lines and you’ll soon see it makes uncomfortable reading for the state of crime in the town centre:

Some of the evidence taken as part of the Council review. Click on image to view full article (opens in a new window).

Both Taunton Deane Borough Council (“TDBC”) and Avon and Somerset Constabulary (“the Police”) have failed in their primary duty to protect the citizen. There is presently a culture to appease a few, at the consequence of the many.
Neither TDBC, as the elected custodians of Taunton’s town centre, or the Police, as the public body employed to combat crime, are at the present time taking the lead to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour. Both need to take robust and expedient action.
Over recent months TDBC councillors have been informed of the increased level of concern caused by crime and anti-social behaviour in and around Taunton’s town centre. This includes, but is not exclusive to, theft from businesses, drug dealing and consumption, criminal damage and anti-social behaviour caused by rough sleeping.
Simon Midge who said: “As a former police officer of 23 years and former member of the town centre team I feel that it is unsafe to take my young family into the town given the presence of aggressive beggars, street drinking and drunkenness, open and unashamed drug dealing and use to the point we will travel to Bristol to shop, the town centre is feral and has been declining over the last few years.”
Celia Rowan, who works in the town centre, said: “I find it harder and harder to do my real job, as I now spend so much of my working day, chasing drug and alcohol addicted thieves from the shop where I work. If I leave the shop for a lunch break, I am constantly pestered for money or cigarettes, by these same people.”
Despite businesses employing significant security measures, due to the present high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour businesses are concerned that that they are unable to fulfil their duty of care to both employees and customers.

STATE OF CRIME EVIDENCE 3: 2019 SHOPLIFTING STATISTICS

This evidence only came up as we were about to publish this article, but the Leader of the South West Business Crime unit had a column in the County Gazette on 6th February, and he stated that Taunton has seen a 9% increase in recorded shoplifting. This is a marked increase while the whole BID consultation process has been going on.

STATE OF CRIME EVIDENCE 4: FINALLY WE HAVE BID’S OWN CRIME RESEARCH presented in their feasibility study and consultation process survey, showing how important a topic it is for bid businesses

Taunton BID’s own Feasibility Study dated February 2019 (copy here, opens in a new window), also provides strong evidence of how important an effective crime solution would be as part of the BID Business Plan to be developed. See pages 17 & 18 of the Feasibility Study, where the following is presented:

Although there was a range of views presented during the consultation meetings held, the key priorities for any proposed scheme can be summarised as follows: • Safety, rough sleepers and security were major issues, particularly among the corporate retailers. This is unsurprising given that they have the largest retail footprints in the town and the nature of their store layout and presentation makes theft and the safety of their staff a major issue.
What became very clear in the process of consultation and conversation with this sample of people was that for large retailers and the licensed businesses, the greatest priority for their businesses was security and antisocial behaviour. One of them even said, “that until the security of the town was sorted out there was little point in marketing Taunton or encouraging new customers to visit”.

In addition, we have BID’s own ‘consultation phase’ survey conducted July to November 2019 (copy of the results here, opens in a new window), in which crime scored as the second highest priority after Events. 78% agreed or strongly agreed a Safety & Security is important. It was only beaten in importance by Events at 90%, with all other topics scoring lower than Security & Safer i.e. Events, Street Scene, Business Support and Representation). Clearly a crime related solution was important to businesses of all sizes, reflecting the concerns of many businesses in the town centre about crime and anti-social behaviour.

SO WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN AND WHAT IS THE REAL SCANDAL?

As you’ve just read for yourself, the overwhelming evidence of Taunton’s big crime related problems and even BID’s own research throughout the whole of 2019 was telling them just how important and high a priority, a decent ‘Safer & Secure’ solution would be. However it’s evident that the ‘core’ members of the Taunton BID steering group (perhaps the BID Consultant and Chairman) chose to ignore all the crime evidence, business feedback and even what their own research was telling them, and instead came up with a few token ideas very early on, without deep consultation with businesses on crime as part of their formal ‘Consultation Phase’ July to November 2019. Why do we think that you may ask? Here’s why;

The ideas above are not a solution in any way, everything is a bit of ‘we might look to do this’ or ‘encourage that’, nothing there is a committed tangible solution with deliverables, to play a meaningful part in tackling Taunton’s big town centre crime problems.
The small budget speaks for itself, a token amount they don’t even really know what they will spend it on given there are no costed plans. It represents just 5.3% of the overall budget, 4th in size for what their own survey shows is the 2nd highest priority topic, just 1/8th of their survey’s highest priority (Events at £120,000), and only just a bit more that the bottom 2 priorities that get £10,000.
For such an important topic, there’s no evidence of BID discussing the topic with SWT Council, the Police or even crime experts, to help them decide what might be a good solution for Taunton BID might look like. Events and marketing is different, many business people on the steering group will likely have a lot of experience in those areas, but anything crime related is a specialist knowledge and experience area.
But this next point is the real scandal, how the Steering committee had decided very early on, only a couple months after their feasibility study and a full 2 months before their consultation study even opened, that Safer & secure would be a low business plan spending priority. Ignoring all the evidence around them about Taunton’s crime problems, seems BID made the decision at an early stage that any form of increased policing or appropriate spending amount, would not be forthcoming in the business plan. It’s absolutely crazy to not even at least properly consider what is proven to be the best crime solution for town centre BIDs with crime problems like Taunton, and that is some form of improved policing, usually in the guise of wardens or rangers as so many other BIDs across the country successfully employ as a core component of their BID crime reduction strategy. Okay, perhaps after detailed consultation BID might decide wardens aren’t right for Taunton and so they might invest in other decent crime solutions, but it’s clear that BID just didn’t even want to raise the issue of policing / wardens in the consultation phase, have already decided themselves that the crime budget would be small and increased policing would not be offered in any shape or form. The evidence for this is in the following paragraph from the BID Steering Group minutes for 21st May 2019 (remember that’s 2 months before their consultation phase starting with their July launch event, and a full copy of the minutes is here, opens in a new window);

Issue was raised by JO’B that if improved / increased policing was not going to be a BID proposal, that the working party needed to have some thought out response to those who will either want it to be included, or who will expect it to be. In this way business leaders would understand this from an early stage. LB suggested that for the larger businesses, for whom theft and shrinkage were major concerns, there would need to be something in the BID proposals that seeks to address these issues – gave the example of the BID proposing to support key crime/ theft reducing initiatives, rather than looking at policing. KL and CB raised the recent introduction of the DISK system which seems to be having some early positive outcomes, and urged the working group to familiarize themselves with the system. LR suggested she could get hold of some leaflets that could be circulated at the next working group meeting. BT added that if there was an electronic version, it could be circulated with future minutes. CB went on to say that he had tried to manage expectations at the recent Retailer’s Meetings that the BID may choose to support a successful crime reduction scheme, but that retailers shouldn’t expect a lump sum coming their way to start or prop up a scheme.

The first line says it all really, this is the first Steering Group meeting before their open consultation phase, and clearly the BID consultant and/or Chairman have told everyone that any form of increased policing type solution is not going to be part of the BID Business Plan. It really is staggering that such a decision was made by a few people before the Steering Group even started consulting with all businesses on what they might want, evidently they were already planning to totally ignore any policing suggestions and discussion of the topic, not even openly entertain discussion of the idea of anything to do with additional policing in any form. Clearly JO’B wanted to know what their response would be if asked or any business wanted to discuss, to which the answer seems to have been “it’s not up for discussion as part of our consultation process”. Seems they did not even want go out to businesses and ask if they would like to consider some extra policing of some description.

Clearly the BID Consultant (LB) was driving the direction agenda away from any policing options, as shown by the comment “LB suggested …….., rather than looking at policing”.

The middle part of the paragraph goes onto acknowledge they need to at least have something in the Business Plan, so looks like they quickly jumped on DISC. Considering it belongs to a non-compliant scheme and shoplifting has gone up 9% in the past year, not exactly a proven solution. Also given it’s compliance issues, should the private BID company really risk promoting it? If so it’s potentially opening itself up to liabilities if the worst happened.

Then there’s the last part when the Chairman (CB) says he’s already managed the expectations of the large retailers. So he’s already ‘told’ the large retailers not to expect much by way of a crime solution, whether it’s important to them or not! But large retailers aside crime is also important for smaller businesses, otherwise BID’s own survey wouldn’t have given it such a priority, and we have spoken to small businesses that have valid concerns around crime, anti-social behaviour, safey and security etc.

Safety and security aside for a moment, all the above is strong evidence that aspects of the BID Business Plan agenda were being set even before the consultation phase opened, possibly having set budgets as well. Best practice for a BID development process is to survey and consult with as many businesses as possible, big and small, over several months, and where nationals are concerned not consult with just the local managers, because they come and go, and are not fully accountable for loss reduction etc. Had BID even engaged at Head Office level as they should re their views on crime, from what we understand probably not because they had already decided it’s a sideline theme in their Business Plan. All further evidence that the ‘Consultation process’ was not really a consultation in the true sense of the word, as we wrote about last summer in our article Taunton BID are ‘pulling the wool over our eyes’, by saying consultation is ‘now open to consider having’ a BID. Clearly agendas were set, and you can even tell this from the leading questions in their survey, but unfortunAtely for BID it seems the high prioRity response they got about crime might have even caught them out!

So what could Taunton BID have considered as an effective policing solution if it wanted to?

Besides consulting with all the businesses to understand their concerns all the crime evidence was pointing to, BID should have also properly consulted with crime stakeholders such as SWT Council, the Police, the Safer Somerset Business Partnership and maybe other security experts. With this, BID could have ensured that if it was to present a crime solution as part of their Business Plan it would be the best possible one after detailed consultation, that would be fit for purpose and properly costed with a worthy budget to effect change, whilst balancing with other Business Plan priorities. Although we believe that SWT Council and the Police should take more action, accountability and financial responsibility for Taunton town centre crime, without it BID has had an opportunity to play a lead role in a town centre crime solution that could have benefited all businesses.

If Taunton BID were to consider policing, Weston-Super-Mare BID like many other BIDs across the country with crime problems similar to Taunton have been extremely successful utilising wardens (sometimes also referred to as Rangers) for policing, and in the TDBC report mentioned above it was recommended as a good solution for Taunton (some of BID’s homework had perhaps been done for them by the Council only months before!). The report stated the following, which provides a nice insight into how wardens could be used for policing, if BID had wanted to just consider such a policing solution:

This is a Taunton Business Plan quote. Both Weston and Bath have wardens for policing, which is what this voter likes about those BID’s! Taunton BID will be a different kind of BID, an events BID that is ignoring any kind of policing.

Whilst temporarily employed by TDBC, street wardens were able to act as first responders. The manner in which street wardens performed their duties is commended. Street wardens act as a conduit for assisting the public and reporting crimes. Furthermore, as street wardens do not benefit from powers of arrest informal resolution often occurs, which can include the return of stolen items. Street wardens enabled a sense of security, which is otherwise absent. Weston-Super-Mare (provided by the BID) employ street wardens as part of a strategy to assist against crime and anti-social behaviour.

The same TDBC report even acknowledged that BID could play a part to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour issues:

A new Business Improvement District (“BID”) initiative is proposed to assist tackle crime and anti-social behaviour issues. BID will not ensue until at least twelve months hence and is subject to majority agreement by way of vote of business rates payers.

no matter the crime solution arrived at, taunton bid aren’t even following best BID industry practice

Click on image to open a copy of the NBCS crime manifesto for BID’s.

As a final note, it appears Taunton BID haven’t even considered BID industry best practise for crime by following guidance from the National Business Crime Solution (NBCS). The NBCS is a not for profit initiative that enables the effective sharing of appropriate data between the police, crime reduction agencies and the business community to reduce crime and risks to all, and it represents around 50 of the largest major retail interests in the UK, learn more at www.nationalbusinesscrimesolution.com. The interesting thing about NBCS is that it has even published some great guidance for BID’s when considering a crime solution, a Manifesto. This Manifesto has been written on behalf of retail industry business leaders and local SME’s, to help drive national consistency by BID’s in crime management workings. Click here or on the Manifesto image to download a copy of the crime Manifesto for BID’s (opens in a new window, and it’s only 8 pages).

Within the Manifesto the NBCS lists 6 key principles a BID should clearly demonstrate, in order for its members to support a BID. But from looking at each of these principles and comparing to how Taunton have developed their crime offering and the resulting solution in their business plan, we’d suggest they have not followed these BID crime solution guiding principles. If they haven’t even bothered reading or attempting to follow best industry practise for a BID crime solution (no matter the amount of funding or project deliverables arrived at), the BID is settling itself up for failure for Safer and Secure. So for any Taunton store NBCS affiliated companies reading this, clearly Taunton BID aren’t meeting the key principles you want to see in order to support a BID!

The NBCS crime manifesto guiding principles for BID’s.

Considering Taunton’s crime problems and it’s importance to businesses, we expected big things from Taunton BID around a crime solution. At the Business Plan launch event in January BID said they asked the nationals if they want money spent on crime, and the response came back “no thankyou, please spend on footfall generating budgets”. We wonder if this is true, and if it is, how many businesses and of what sizes did they consult with? Also remember, security is not just all about the big nationals to decide on alone.

Sadly, it appears BID have “missed a trick” by not conducting a proper research and consultation process around crime, all because a couple people decided very early on it isn’t important and latterly seemd to have tried justifying their position. This has led to a business plan containing nothing more than some token effort statements on crime, as opposed to any properly costed and targeted tangible actions to help solve Taunton’s big crime problems for BID businesses. There seems little point dressing the streets and marketing the town in an attempt to increase footfall, if Taunton’s crime and anti-social behaviour problems haven’t been solved.