A £30,000 Community Safety Fund grant helped Grimsby retailers on Freeman Street introduce two-way radios and the DISC information-sharing app, giving businesses a faster way to share concerns and respond collectively to suspected theft and anti-social behaviour. The scheme was not designed as a substitute for policing. It was one part of a wider partnership in which shop staff, police, the council and support organisations each took responsibility for a different piece of the problem.
That distinction matters. Retail crime prevention strategies in Grimsby are increasingly built around two tracks running together: visible and targeted deterrence on one side, and diversion, treatment and practical support on the other. One aims to interrupt offending in the moment. The other tries to reduce the circumstances that keep bringing the same problems back to the same streets and businesses.
The results from Grimsby Town Centre between 2023 and 2025 suggest that this combined approach is making a measurable difference. Overall crime fell by 5%, anti-social behaviour by 14%, alcohol-related anti-social behaviour by 51%, violence causing injury by 23%, and bicycle theft by more than 45%. Those figures do not prove that one intervention solved retail crime. They do show what can happen when enforcement, information-sharing and community support are treated as parts of the same local safety effort.
A town-centre problem needs more than a town-centre response
Retail crime rarely arrives as a single, neatly defined offence. A shop may be dealing with repeated theft, intimidating behaviour, alcohol-related disorder, damage, aggressive begging, substance misuse or a young person being drawn into anti-social behaviour. These incidents affect staff and customers differently, but on the ground they often overlap.
That is why Operation Mastery, launched in April 2024 under Safer Streets 5, brought together Humberside Police, North East Lincolnshire Council and partner agencies including NAViGO and We Are With You. Its purpose was to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour in Grimsby Town Centre through a multi-agency operation rather than through isolated interventions.
The partnership model recognises a practical truth familiar to anyone working on Freeman Street, in the town centre or along the wider retail routes: a police officer may be able to remove an immediate threat, but may not be able to address the reason that a repeat offender keeps returning. A shop manager may know exactly when a pattern of theft is developing, but cannot safely investigate it alone. A support service may be able to help with substance misuse or wider vulnerability, but needs a route into the situation.
The work becomes more effective when those pieces connect.
The investment has also been significant. Safer Streets 5 included £2.2 million for town-centre security and CCTV systems, while an earlier Safer Streets 2 scheme brought £432,000 to West Marsh. Funding on that scale is not simply about installing equipment or increasing patrols. It creates the capacity for local agencies to maintain a presence, share information and build the relationships that make prevention possible.
Retail crime is not reduced by choosing between consequences and compassion; it is reduced when the right response reaches the right person at the right time.
Deterrence: making the risk of offending more immediate
The enforcement side of Grimsby’s strategy is deliberately visible in some places and deliberately discreet in others. Humberside Police use high-visibility foot patrols to reassure staff and customers, while plain-clothes operations can identify patterns that are less obvious when officers are in uniform.
Those methods serve different purposes. A uniformed patrol can alter the feel of a street, provide a point of contact for retailers and make it harder for opportunistic behaviour to go unnoticed. Plain-clothes officers can observe repeat activity without announcing their presence, which is particularly relevant where a small number of individuals are linked to multiple incidents.
Police also have a range of powers for situations in which anti-social behaviour is persistent or escalating:
- Section 35 dispersal orders can be used to direct people away from a specified area for a limited period where their behaviour is contributing to crime or disorder.
- Public Space Protection Orders, commonly known as PSPOs, set conditions for behaviour in defined public spaces. They are intended to address recurring problems affecting the quality of life in an area.
- Criminal Behaviour Orders, or CBOs, can impose restrictions on people convicted of offences where further anti-social behaviour is a concern.
- Plain-clothes deployments can support the identification of repeat retail crime and provide evidence that is less dependent on staff having to confront suspected offenders.
- High-visibility patrols remain important for confidence, prevention and rapid engagement with businesses.
These tools are not interchangeable. A dispersal order may deal with an immediate gathering or pattern of behaviour. A CBO is a longer-term restriction linked to a person’s offending and court process. A PSPO applies to conduct in a defined public area rather than to one individual. Understanding that difference helps explain why no single order can be judged as the complete answer to retail crime.
The same applies to retail exclusion notices. Such notices can be used by businesses or retail partnerships to restrict access to particular premises or groups of premises, subject to the way the scheme is organised and the legal safeguards around it. Their effectiveness depends heavily on accurate identification, consistent communication between businesses and a clear process for reviewing information. Used carelessly, an exclusion system can create disputes or unfairly affect the wrong person. Used as part of a properly managed partnership, it can help retailers respond consistently rather than each business improvising its own approach.
In Grimsby, the wider enforcement picture also includes a point that is easy to lose in public discussion: Humberside Police state that they do not apply a monetary value threshold when deciding whether to prosecute shop theft offences. A low-value theft is not automatically treated as irrelevant. The circumstances, evidence, offending history and public-interest considerations still shape the decision, but the value of the goods alone does not create a fixed line below which prosecution is ruled out.
That is important for smaller shops, where repeated low-value losses can accumulate into a serious financial and emotional burden. It also matters to staff, who can feel that an incident is being dismissed simply because the goods were inexpensive. Enforcement is not only about the final value of one item; it is about patterns, impact and the safety of the people expected to deal with the incident.
Information-sharing: why the GRIP model matters
A business can have good security cameras and still be isolated. If staff do not know that a person has been linked to incidents nearby, or if they have no safe way to alert neighbouring shops, prevention becomes slower and more fragmented.
Grimsby Retailers In Partnership, or GRIP CIC, was created to strengthen that shared response. With £30,000 from the Police and Crime Commissioner’s Community Safety Fund, the scheme introduced two-way radios and the DISC app across Grimsby town-centre and Freeman Street retailers. The funding was announced for the rollout in October 2022, with the programme later expanded through Safer Business Action Week in October 2023.
The practical value of a radio network is straightforward. Staff can communicate quickly without leaving a till or approaching a difficult situation. They can warn nearby businesses about an emerging issue, seek assistance and pass information through a recognised channel rather than relying on informal messages after the event.
The DISC app adds a different layer. Digital information-sharing can help businesses record incidents, identify repeat patterns and provide more coherent information to police and partner agencies. It also supports a sense that a shop is not facing the problem alone. That collective effort is particularly valuable for independent retailers, whose staffing levels and security budgets may be much smaller than those of national chains.
The scheme was extended into Cleethorpes after GRIP secured a further £26,500 from the Commissioner’s Fund. Two-way radios and the DISC app were introduced for businesses along Grimsby Road and St Peter’s Avenue, widening the partnership beyond the original Grimsby locations.
| Approach | Immediate strength | Limitation if used alone | Contribution to prevention |
|---|---|---|---|
| High-visibility patrols | Reassures staff and customers and can deter opportunistic behaviour | Cannot be present on every street or respond to every repeat pattern | Builds confidence and creates regular contact between police and retailers |
| Plain-clothes operations | Helps identify repeat activity and gather evidence discreetly | Less visible to the wider community | Supports targeted action where incidents are concentrated |
| Two-way radios | Allows rapid communication between participating businesses | Depends on staff training, coverage and responsible use | Turns separate shops into a connected local network |
| DISC information-sharing app | Creates a record of incidents and emerging patterns | Information must be accurate, proportionate and kept responsibly | Helps businesses and agencies see patterns rather than isolated events |
| CBOs and other enforcement orders | Can impose specific restrictions on persistent offenders | Restrictions alone may not address underlying causes | Provides a formal consequence alongside support or supervision |
| Diversion and support services | Can address substance misuse, vulnerability and related needs | Engagement may take time and cannot guarantee immediate change | Reduces the conditions that can contribute to repeated offending |
Information-sharing is not a replacement for evidence, and a radio message is not a conviction. Its value sits earlier in the chain: helping people identify a developing pattern, avoid unsafe confrontation and give police and partner services a clearer account of what is happening.
There are also responsibilities attached to it. Retailers need to avoid speculation, protect personal information and distinguish between observed behaviour and assumption. A good business crime reduction partnership is not a licence for informal labelling. It is a structured way to make reliable information useful.
Diversion: dealing with the reasons behind repeat offending
Deterrence can stop an incident, remove someone from a location or impose a legal restriction. It may be exactly what is needed to protect staff and customers. But where offending is connected to substance misuse, poor mental health, homelessness, vulnerability or entrenched anti-social behaviour, punishment alone may not break the cycle.
This is where the involvement of NAViGO and We Are With You in Operation Mastery becomes significant. Their participation places support and diversion alongside enforcement, rather than treating it as an unrelated service to be considered later.
Diversion does not mean ignoring the harm caused to retailers. It means recognising that a response can contain both accountability and an opportunity to change direction. Someone may still face consequences for theft or violence while also being offered a route towards treatment or practical support. In other cases, early contact with a support service may prevent a situation from escalating into further offending.
The precise outcome will vary from person to person. There is no confirmed local figure showing how many repeat shoplifters stop offending after entering substance misuse support, and it would be wrong to suggest that diversion automatically produces a better result than enforcement. The evidence available here does not provide a direct comparison of reoffending rates between those receiving support and those subject to CBOs.
What the local model does show is a willingness to put both responses in the same room.
Support is most useful when it is connected to place
A national strategy can describe diversion in broad terms, but local delivery depends on knowing where problems are concentrated and which organisations people will actually encounter. In Grimsby, the town centre, Freeman Street, West Marsh and the routes into Cleethorpes each have their own patterns of movement, business activity and community concern.
That geography matters. A service that is technically available but disconnected from the places where incidents occur may be difficult to access. A police operation that identifies a vulnerability but has no established route into support may lose the opportunity to intervene constructively. A retailer who recognises a regular customer in crisis may need clear advice about whom to contact, rather than being left to manage a complex situation at the shop counter.
The local partnership approach creates the possibility of a more joined-up response:
1. Retailers report and record what they are seeing, using agreed channels rather than relying on confrontation or fragmented accounts.
2. Police assess the immediate risk and offending pattern, using patrols, investigation and enforcement powers where appropriate.
3. Council and partner agencies identify wider concerns, including anti-social behaviour affecting a location or group.
4. Support organisations provide specialist engagement, particularly where substance misuse, mental health or vulnerability is part of the picture.
5. The partnership reviews what is happening over time, so the response can shift as patterns change.
That is not a neat five-step cure. People do not move through these stages in a predictable line, and some will disengage from support. But the structure is still valuable because it prevents the town from relying on a single institution to solve a problem produced by several overlapping pressures.
What the crime reduction figures tell us
The figures from 2023 to 2025 offer a useful measure of progress, but they need to be read with some discipline.
In Grimsby Town Centre, overall crime fell by 5% and anti-social behaviour by 14%. Alcohol-related anti-social behaviour fell by 51%, while violence leading to injury dropped by 23%. Bicycle theft decreased by more than 45%.
These reductions matter for different reasons. The fall in alcohol-related anti-social behaviour points towards a meaningful change in one of the recurring pressures associated with town-centre safety. The reduction in violence causing injury is especially important for workers and visitors who must feel that the town centre is usable after dark as well as during the daytime. The decline in bicycle theft may reflect the effect of better awareness, targeted activity, environmental measures or changes in reporting and opportunity; the available facts do not establish a single cause.
Nor should the 5% overall reduction be presented as evidence that every form of retail crime has moved in the same direction. An overall figure is a broad measure. It cannot tell us, on its own, how many incidents involved repeat offenders, how many were opportunistic, which types of shop were most affected or how much of the change came from individual interventions.
The strongest conclusion is a more careful one: the combined programme coincided with reductions across several measures of town-centre crime and anti-social behaviour, and the official account attributes the improvement to a multi-agency strategy rather than to one tactic.
The most encouraging number is not a licence to declare victory; it is evidence that local partnership can produce movement where isolated responses have struggled.
That matters for future funding and for public trust. Residents deserve to know whether a new patrol, camera system, radio network or diversion project is making a difference. At the same time, businesses and agencies need enough patience to judge prevention over a meaningful period. A single week can be shaped by weather, events, school holidays or a particular policing operation. Durable revitalisation of a town centre is measured in patterns, not anecdotes.
Deterrence and diversion are strongest when they reinforce one another
The comparison between deterrence and diversion can be tempting because it appears to offer a choice: be tougher, or be more supportive. In practice, retail crime prevention strategies in Grimsby work better when that choice is rejected.
Enforcement protects people from immediate harm and gives repeat offending consequences. It can make clear that shop theft, intimidation and violence are taken seriously, regardless of whether the stolen goods are expensive. Visible patrols, plain-clothes operations, CBOs, dispersal powers and other tools can reduce opportunities and disrupt persistent behaviour.
Diversion addresses a different question: what needs to change if the person involved is going to stop returning to the same behaviour? Support for substance misuse, mental health and vulnerability cannot replace a proportionate response to harm, but neither can enforcement on its own provide every form of help a person may need.
The GRIP network adds a third layer by connecting the people who see the problem first. Radios and the DISC app give businesses a shared language and a safer way to act. The expansion from Freeman Street and Grimsby town centre to Grimsby Road and St Peter’s Avenue in Cleethorpes reflects the practical reality that retail movement does not stop at an administrative boundary.
For local businesses, the most useful next step is not to wait for a single large intervention. Joining or strengthening a business crime reduction partnership, agreeing how incidents will be recorded, training staff not to put themselves at risk and knowing how to refer concerns to police or support services can all improve the local response. Businesses should also make sure that staff understand the difference between observing and confronting: no radio network or prevention scheme is worth an injury.
For residents, reporting patterns matters. Repeated anti-social behaviour, unsafe routes, intimidation around a shop or concerns about vulnerable people can be reported through the appropriate local channels even when an incident does not appear dramatic in isolation. The quality of local information helps agencies decide where resources are needed and whether a problem is occasional or persistent.
Grimsby’s progress has come from collective effort: police activity, council coordination, retailer communication, CCTV and town-centre investment, and specialist organisations working on the pressures that sit behind some offending. The lesson is not that one side of the strategy has won. It is that prevention becomes more resilient when consequences and support are planned together, close to the streets and businesses they are intended to protect.