Written question asked by Jim Cunningham (Labour) on Monday, 2 June 2008, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 5 June 2008. It was answered by Lord Coaker (Labour) on Thursday, 5 June 2008 on behalf of the Home Office.

Crime: Small Businesses

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent steps the Government have taken to reduce the incidence of crime against small businesses.

Answer: Between 2004 and 2007 the Home Office provided more than £1 million of funding to the Action Against Business Crime group (AABC) to set up 120 business crime reduction partnerships in towns and cities across England and Wales. It also, in partnership with stakeholders, produced a booklet to enable businesses to undertake a crime prevention survey of their premises. More than 200,000 copies of this booklet have so far been printed and distributed.The Home Office has also provided funding to the Perpetuity Group to develop a tool for small and medium-sized retailers to design out crime in their stores and reduce the opportunities for shop thieves to operate. In addition to this, we have provided funding to the Nottinghamshire Business Crime Initiative to develop a model for reducing crime against small and medium-sized businesses on industrial estates and parks.The Government are working in partnership with retail organisations to tackle retail crime. As part of this work we have set up a National Retail Crime Steering Group to provide a forum to discuss and devise strategies for tackling crimes of concern to retailers.We are committed to raising the profile of crimes against all businesses, making provisions for better information about them and producing guidance to support local partnerships in their efforts to tackle the crimes which affect them.

Secondary information