Newbury Business Today

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

10th November 2011

Email: richard.maynard@newburynews.co.uk

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with Pc Lee Frost

I am now back in my old role dealing with the town centre and surrounding businesses, and I hope some of you have seen me walking around the town centre and business parks. I have to say, I enjoyed my time as an acting sergeant, and hope to do it again, but for now I am getting my teeth stuck in to the town centre again.
I attended the grand opening of the Parkway shopping complex on Thursday 27th October, and I am extremely impressed with it. Newbury now has a cosmopolitan look about it, and the town centre has a good mixture of new and old, so it rivals nearby Reading and Basingstoke for a shopping experience, and will increase revenue for all the surrounding areas. The grand opening was well organised, and the parade was a fitting way to open the new stores.
I would now like to talk about an item which I spoke about a few months back, and that is metal thefts. There has been a consistent flow of reports where businesses are seeing copper and lead taken from their premises, and we need to be able to trace this lead and copper when we find it, be it at scrap yards or at offender’s home addresses. I would ask businesses to mark any metal which has the potential to be stolen, so as to help us recover it if it is stolen and bring offenders to justice. Unfortunately due to the high price of scrap metal, this problem will not go away, so you need to do all you can to combat this, and if you do need any advice please let me know.
The clocks are now going back, and with the nights drawing in earlier, there is much more opportunity for offenders to target houses and commit burglaries. The neighbourhood team have recently had a campaign to highlight this potential, and would ask everyone to leave a light on, which deters burglars, if they think someone is home. As well as this, ensure all windows are locked, doors are double locked and any vehicles you have are also locked. We have had numerous reports of items being stolen in cars where the doors were left open.
You can now find Thames Valley on facebook and twitter, and if you see me about in the town centre, feel free to approach me and have a word with me about anything you want. My email is lee.frost@thamesvalley.pnn.police.uk

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