Open letter following article regarding a town centre business on 16 February 2024

As part of our commitment to keeping businesses in Nuneaton and Bedworth town centres safe, we regularly engage with shops and stalls to ensure that they know what support is available to them if they are the target of crime.

This includes regular patrols from a dedicated town centre officer, as well as offers of assistance from our crime prevention team for advice on how to harden their stores against thieves and anti-social behaviour.

Over the past six months, we have been taking decisive action across the county against shoplifters, leading to twice as many thieves ending up in court and doubling our positive actions as a result of investigations.

We are also aware of issues with anti-social behaviour in the town centre and have been actively identifying and targeting suspects and acting to issue them with community orders.

None of this would be possible without the support of our local businesses, who have worked with our Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) and our town centre officer to make the town centre a better place to be.

We are aware that a business on Coventry Street in Nuneaton has been alleging that we have not supported them when they have been the target of robbery and shoplifting.

In a recent article, the business owners have claimed that police have “not been bothered” about their reports of crime, and that we have refused to engage with them for crime prevention purposes, to the extent that they have now installed a customer hatch rather than allowing the public into their store.

This is not the position of Warwickshire Police. We have put dedicated resources into the town centre to address the concerns of all business owners.

We have had a number of positive interactions with businesses and an increase in detections where criminal offences have been reported.

The shop owners have been actively encouraged to report all crimes so that police can appropriately investigate.  To date, six reports of thefts from this shop have been made since 2017.

We have proactively attended the shop after hearing about incidents from second- and third-hand sources, including town centre CCTV operators and other shop security.

On attendance of SNT officers, the owners have not made a report, and have not been willing to engage with our efforts to follow up.

We have offered a direct means of contact with our town centre officer and to liaise with our crime prevention team, these offers remain open.

Recently, we visited the premises again to offer our support, including a comprehensive look at better protecting the premises against theft using crime prevention techniques and contact means for the town centre officer.  

We are working in partnership with the business owners to achieve successful outcomes which includes arrest and investigation of all reported offences.

We will continue to offer support to this business and every other business in the town centre as we continuously seek prevent and investigate crime.

We actively encourage all residents and business owners to report incidents and crime online at www.warwickshire.police.uk/report, by phone on 101, or anonymously through CrimeStoppers on 0800 555 111.

Always call 999 for a crime in progress.

Inspector Kris Shore

Nuneaton & Bedworth Safer Neighbourhood Team

Warwickshire Police