Located just a few miles outside of Birmingham City Centre, the suburb of Kings Heath is a well sought after area of Birmingham with many Victorian style terraced and large semi-detached homes. These dwellings cater for the lively bustling community of Kings Heath where an energetic mix of independent stores sit nestled between recognised national retailers along the Alcester Road and side streets.
(pic - Iconic Kings Heath Mural)
The Enjoy Kings Heath Business Improvement District was first launched in 2008 and is made up of around 300 local businesses and organisations within a defined geographical area. Each business contributes to the BID levy which is pumped straight back into improving Kings Heath for businesses, residents and visitors to enjoy.
As part of this investment into the local business community, the Enjoy Kings Heath team have this month switched from their previous crime intelligence supplier to SentrySIS, in a move to provide a more robust, modern and technologically advanced service for its levy payers.
(pic - SentrySIS App used by Kings Heath BID and levy payers)
Kings Heath Town Centre Manager, Matt Powell commented and said “Over the years we have increased our on-street presence of security wardens. They do a great job every day of preventing crime against businesses and reassuring members of the public. We chose to switch to SentrySIS as it clearly provides a more seamless and advanced solution to sharing intelligence about business crime, not only between our BID levy payers, but with other BIDs in the city too”.
Business users of the Kings Heath SentrySIS installation, can now securely share crime intelligence with each other to help reduce business crime in the area. These methods include notifications and alerts along with the ability to report crime incidents directly to the Kings Heath team for further investigation.
(pic - Bustling shops on Kings Heath High Street)
Other features at the fingertips of levy payers and the Kings Heath administrators comprise of searching the database of known offenders in the area, seeking details on vehicles that have been associated with crime and identifying any crime hotspots so that a physical presence can be dispersed to this location.
Using the SentrySIS platform is easily achieved via the dedicated smartphone app on Apple and Android devices, or via the web portal on any internet enabled.
Birmingham isn’t new to the benefits of the SentrySIS crime intelligence platform as neighbouring business improvement district, the Central BID Birmingham (the new name for the Retail Bid) has been an avid SentrySIS user of since 2019.
(pic- Premium vintage clothes store, Top Banana in Kings Heath)
By activating the SentrySIS data sharing functions in each platform, system administrators can easily collaborate with each other to help identify city-wide offenders who conduct criminal acts in both the Kings Heath and Birmingham city centre. This is all triggered and managed in a fully GDPR compliant way.
Chris Nriapia from SentrySIS said “We are delighted to be part of Kings Heath’s community safety plans by providing street wardens with the technology to help them reduce business crime in the area. This bold move by the management team at Kings Heath BID will without question, improve the area for residents, visitors and levy payers.”
Chris concluded by saying “We are equally excited to see how Kings Heath’s partnership work with neighbouring business improvement district; City Safe at the Central BID will make Birmingham a much safer for everyone.”
Business crime reduction partnerships and business improvement districts who are looking to improve the way they share crime intelligence with members and levy payers, can contact us to request a free demonstration of the software.