Safe and Clean

Safety and Security – Ensuring the town is Safe and Clean

The ‘Safe and Clean’ projects of gyBID play a crucial role in ensuring that the town centre is perceived as a safe place to work, live and visit. The Great Yarmouth Business Improvement District helps create a more secure and friendly trading environment through our “ShopSafe” scheme that includes Town Centre CCTV, a town centre exclusion scheme and dedicated street wardens.

The gyBID funded crime reduction initiatives have given businesses the tools to reduce minor crime and the vulnerability of their staff to violence. The ShopSafe scheme, incorporating a retail radio link, exclusion scheme, CCTV and Street Wardens has contributed greatly to reducing the stock loss of many retailers. The street wardens, working closely with the town centre police patrols, CCTV Operators and Council officers have continued to tackle retail crime, anti-social behaviour and environmental crime during the last five years of gyBID, promoting a safer, friendlier and cleaner town centre for all users.

The unique way in which the Great Yarmouth’s CCTV system is managed by the Town Centre Partnership has promoted business involvement in community safety and contributed greatly to the reduction of business crime. The highly experienced and skilled CCTV operators play a proactive role in reducing crime through contact with ShopSafe members and the street wardens using the Partnership’s dedicated radio link. With a direct radio link to Norfolk Police HQ the CCTV control room operators can and get a quick response to incidents from the emergency services.

As outlined in the gyBID business plan an upgrade of the town centre radio link to a digital transmitter was delivered in the first year of the current BID term along with the replacement of all existing ShopSafe radio users VHF analogue handsets with new digital handsets providing much clearer and more secure transmissions. 

Whilst the aim of the Town Centre Partnerships ShopSafe scheme is to deter retail crime and anti-social behaviour in members premises there has been an increasing number of incidents reported by businesses in Great Yarmouth town centre this year. The exclusion scheme allows for a warning to be issued initially followed by a 12 month ban from all members premises if the person offends again within 12 months. A summary of crime reduction incidents involving street wardens and CCTV follows:

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS DURING 2021/22

  • Street Wardens and CCTV activity during 2021/22:

    • 752 ShopSafe incidents attended by Town Centre Street Wardens
    • 98 Exclusion Notices issued to persons committing crime in TCP members businesses
    • 80 Environmental issues reported
    • 81 Incidents of ASB identified
    • 2037 town centre visitors directly assisted by Town Centre Street Wardens
    • 183 Incidents that ShopSafe members were assisted by Great Yarmouth CCTV Operators
    • 1390 Incidents responded to by Great Yarmouth CCTV Operators
    • 409 Incidents resulting in 336 arrests with assistance from Great Yarmouth CCTV

The Partnership is a member of the National Business Crime Solution network and has this year upgraded its intelligence sharing and exclusion scheme to the Disc platform. The Disc platform provides a secure means of sharing information between ShopSafe members and quickly updates them through push notifications of any current or recent incidents.