Feature
PARTNERS IN CRIME
Fashion Forum wants talks with Town
Centre Partnerships over performance
and value for money
T
HE Retail Loss Prevention that these were performing badly.
Fashion Forum is seeking In fact some where they were
talks with Town Centre paying a lot, still had a poor service
Partnerships across the UK although this could also be in part
after research raised down to the levels of engagement
questions over the performance of between the stores, the police and
some in working together with the town centre teams,” adds
stores to combat crime. Wood.
While many of the sample 22 The criteria for the questions was
TCPs scored highly in the based mainly upon towns and
questionnaire sent by the Forum, shopping centres where crime is
many were seen to fall short on high. The fashion retailers had
delivering a value for money pooled their results of ‘hot towns’
service overall. A lack of before conducting the research. A
consistency in standards including survey was then sent out asking
the cost of radio links from town to stores in those towns questions
town, poor visibility of deliverables including:
and unsatisfactory levels of • Do you get regular and useful
communication were identified. In information from the radio?
addition, many out of town stores • How beneficial is the radio?
were simply not covered by • When you have used the radio,
schemes and felt vulnerable. have you received support back
The Fashion Forum comprising in the scheme?
the heads of loss prevention for • Do you get invited to partnership
the High Street’s fashion and meetings and have you
accessory retailers is now to write attended?
to the best performers to • Do you get circulated images of
congratulate them for their on- offenders?
going partnership and • Have you been visited by town these schemes and where we do
collaboration and the worst to seek centre co-ordinators? not see a valuable return on that
talks on areas of improvement. • Do you consider there is a joint investment, we want to address
“The Forum asked their stores in approach to shoplifting in your this, with those who fall below an
sample towns a series of questions town/shopping centre? acceptable level,” said Fashion
linked to the perceived and real • Do you receive regular bulletins Forum Chairman, Richard
effectiveness of the partnerships. from your partnerships? Lawrance, the head of Audit &
They then overlayed all of their • Is there police involvement in the Loss Prevention for Monsoon and
pooled data of the best and worst scheme? Accessorize.
performing towns and shopping “This is not a name and shame
centres for shrinkage, losses linked Many of the towns and shopping exercise. We will write to them
to crime. This provided an uneven centres where the Forum had issues individually to either congratulate
landscape of consistency when it were found wanting in terms of them or invite them for further
comes to relationships between higher shrink and poor back-up as discussions on areas of
store managers and their individual well as a high cost for radio improvement. We would want to
TCPs,” said Andrew Wood, support. see an action plan and some key
managing director of The ORIS “From our findings, many of the performance indicators that we
Group which collated the data. towns and shopping centres are can all agree upon for the future.
“We also allowed for the fact doing an excellent job and we will There is an issue and TCPs have to
that some towns pay less for radio tell them that, but there are understand that retailers are
links than others, but there was no equally a lot that are performing looking for stated service levels to
consistent picture that suggested poorly. We pay a lot of money into be met,” he added. RF
38 • RETAIL FRAUD
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