New crime reporting app Disc. launches
Peterborough Positive, the city’s Business Improvement District (BID), is encouraging levy-paying businesses to download a free app that will help prevent low-level crime and anti-social behaviour in the city centre.
The Peterborough Business Against Crime Partnership will be powered by Disc, an online platform and digital application designed to help local businesses share information and report crimes.
The introduction of the Disc system will help the BID work towards one of its objectives – improving safety in the city centre – and partner with the night-time economy by introducing the app to PubWatch, as well as the daytime retail sector.
Information provided on Disc includes galleries of know offenders, news alerts, details of upcoming events, useful documents and ‘exclusion schemes’, which are all accessible 24/7.
There is also an instant messaging system which can warn businesses of anti-social behaviour in real-time without infringing data protection laws.
The platform generates a weekly eNewsletter containing up-to-date reports on incidents that have happened within the previous seven days. Businesses are encouraged to regularly report low-level crime and anti-social behaviour which will help generate intelligence reports to identify prolific local offenders.
In the UK, more than 550 towns and city centres, national retailers and security companies use Disc. The system does not replace the existing Peterborough City Link service, but it will work hand in hand with it to further reduce crime.
Peterborough Business Against Crime Partnership ensures that Disc is GDPR compliant by ensuring no one has access unless they are invited, nothing is shared unless approved by an administrator and by registering with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Peterborough Positive’s Business Improvement Manager, Pep Cipriano, said:
“We have introduced Disc as one of Peterborough Positive’s first projects because creating a safer, more welcoming city centre is a key concern for businesses. We have already signed up more than 80 businesses and hope to get as many of our levy payers as possible using the system.”
“The recruitment of our City Centre Ambassadors will also help towards making a safer city centre for all by acting as our ‘eyes and ears’ and working alongside the City Council’s enforcement officers, as well as the city centre policing team.”
Steve Lang, Managing Director of Littoralis, the organisation behind the Disc system, said:
“We are really pleased to see Peterborough Positive activate our system in the city centre. It has been designed to lower local business crime, including anti-social behaviour. Businesses are encouraged take advantage of the instant messaging feature on the application to report real-time events and help protect each other from low-level crimes.”
To join Disc, business owners need to email das@littoralis.com with details of who they are, their business name, address and which sector it falls into (retail, leisure or both). They will then receive a welcome email inviting them to register on the platform.
Follow Peterborough Positive on LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates on the Peterborough BID’s activities.