After nearly 30 years of encouraging crime prevention techniques in both the landscaping of new developments and the physical security of buildings, Secured By Design (SBD), the national police crime prevention initiative, is poised to provide a wider range of initiatives than ever before to keep people safe.
With the support of the Police Service, SBD has set up the UK’s first ever Police Crime Prevention Academy to run courses for police officers of all ranks and other organisations in crime prevention and problem solving, and an initiative to help licensed premises to deter and reduce crime to keep staff and customers safe.
Services like these will build on SBD’s existing core business of SBD trained police officers and staff working with architects, developers and local authority planners to design out crime at the planning stage in a wide range of building sectors including residential, commercial, retail, mixed use, transport, health, education, sport, leisure and many others.
In addition, SBD will continue to broaden its base of 650 member companies that have products accredited by us for their capability to deter and reduce crime, such as being sufficiently robust to resist physical attack by opportunistic burglars. Whilst the police are unable to recommend specific products, SBD can act as an effective gatekeeper and signpost companies and products that have attained SBD’s Police Preferred Specification.
SBD’s Chief Executive Officer, Guy Ferguson, said it is all about SBD taking a lead to bring relevant organisations together to offer 21st century crime prevention ideas and techniques to ‘prevent the predictable’. It was the right time to push the boundaries to provide a new range of initiatives to support the Police Service.
“We are responding to the new reality of trying to do more with less, and support the police in a number of different ways. If we can design out crime and reduce preventable crime, police officers are enabled to focus on the activities that only they can do,” he explained.
SBD highlights from 2017:
Reducing crime
Police Scotland announced that 3,000 homes built by Kingdom Housing Association on 153 sites in Fife over the last 20 years had resulted in 87% fewer crimes – a ringing endorsement of implementing proven crime prevention techniques at the planning stage into the layout and landscaping, and the physical security of new homes.
Helping developers
SBD’s National Building Approval scheme, which seeks to make building compliance simpler, quicker and cheaper for companies and organisations commissioning new-build developments and major refurbishment schemes, had grown by more than 3,000 buildings over the last 10 months. It now has 7,152 buildings on 73 building sites in 17 Police Force areas.
SBD highlights being launched in 2018:
Providing learning and development
SBD is set to roll out a range of independently certificated, advanced practitioner learning and development courses up to the level of diploma from September 2018 with ProQual, an authorised awarding body. This follows SBD’s agreement in 2017 with the College of Policing to start to deliver crime prevention and designing out crime training in the UK.
Working with the licensing industry
SBD is transforming the way the licensing industry works with Responsible Authorities, such as Police and Local Authorities. Licensed premises from small country pubs through to large city nightclubs will be able to use an online self-assessment, which for the first time brings together all the guidance, standards and advice to record their operational security and management practices and highlight any risks around physical security and most importantly, the safety of staff and customers. It’s called Licensing SAVI (Security & Vulnerability Initiative). It produces a confidential report, which can be shared with third parties like police, local authorities and architects. It follows a Home Office request to provide a guidance manual for licensed premises.
SBD’s crime prevention advice is contained in a series of Development Guides, available on our website.
Tel: 0203 8623 999
Email: enquiries@police-cpi.co.uk
Web: www.securedbydesign.com
