The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper MP, visited the Boots CCTV Monitoring Centre in Nottingham yesterday to hear more about the high-tech solutions that retailers are deploying to tackle retail crime.

The visit took place as the Home Office announced a nationwide blitz on town centre crime and anti-social behaviour. The new Tackling Retail Crime Together Strategy will use shared data to assist the Police in disrupting all types of perpetrators and supports the Government’s Growth Mission to create thriving town centres and support businesses and local communities.

Anthony Hemmerdinger, Managing Director, Boots said: "Retail theft alongside intimidation and abuse of our team members is unacceptable, so we welcome this additional support from Government and the police to strengthen shopworker protection.  

“While we continue to invest significantly in schemes to deter and disrupt crime, including our state-of-the-art CCTV monitoring centre and bodycams for our team members in stores, it is only through collaboration with Government, police forces, and local communities, that we can ensure high streets feel like welcoming and safe spaces for people to work, shop and visit, all the time." 

Boots’ state of the art CCTV monitoring centre in Nottingham is connected centrally to 1,200 Boots stores with a team of security experts on hand reviewing live footage and performing interventions to support store teams. The Boots security team make broadcasts over store tannoy announcements from the centre, which can effectively de-escalate incidents.

In the last three years, Boots has invested millions in security interventions to enhance colleague safety and crime prevention, and to enable high-quality evidence to be provided to policing teams to support their criminal investigations and prosecutions.

Boots also continues to work closely with the Police and actively engage with the Government, Councils, BIDS and Business Crime Partnerships to develop collaborative strategies to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour.