MP Visits Are Back On

Blog by Elaine Dean, President.

We were delighted in July when many of the politicians who had visited our stores to listen to colleagues talking about how retail crime affects them were successful in elections. Many were very unexpected and overturned large majorities.
Sadly we have had more incidents in store recently and were pleased that both the Derbyshire Police & Crime Commissioner Nicolle Ndiweni Roberts and local MPs Catherine Atkinson (Derby North), Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) and John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) have attended stores in their constituencies.

It means a lot to our colleagues to be able to tell their stories about how they actually feel when threatened with a knife, or are spat at or verbally abused etc because it isn't possible to shake off such incidents and many colleagues take their distress home with them so it interferes with all aspects of their lives.

We have given all the newly elected MPs time to settle down into their new roles and now we are back to inviting them in to stores in their areas to hear about the problems facing retail stores.

I went to Smalley Drive store in Derby along with the Loss Prevention team and Operations Manager Rhianne McLean to meet with Jonathan Davies who I had not met before. He was very shocked to hear what is happening and has offered to go into more stores to listen to our colleagues.

I went last week to Bakewell store where John Whitby met us and discussed rural retail crime.

 Myself and the board of directors receive a list of all incidents every months and we ask about follow ups. We intend to keep this very high profile until retail crime becomes as socially unacceptable as say drink driving because we are concerned for the safety of our colleagues