Last week Matthew met with some of the UK’s biggest retailers at the National Business Crime Service Conference and visited Botley Food Store with The Midcounties Co-operative to mark Respect For Shopworkers week.

New statistics show Thames Valley Police received over 500,000 contacts from the public, attended 81,000 incidents and made 16,000 arrests over a six-month period in 2023.

Based in Blackbird Leys, the Sorrell Road Allotment Project is supported by local allotment users who provide seeds and plants for the plots. It is a sustainable project which has, over the years, made a variety of storage spaces, weather resistant shelters and outdoor furniture from reclaimed or donated wood.

The platform, which has been procured by the Office of the Police and Commissioner, will be made available free of charge to retailers, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and Business Crime Reduction Partnerships (BCRPs) across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Milton Keynes.

As part of this week’s policing activity through Operation Sceptre, the Office of the PCC has shared a series of video presentations following the Thames Valley Knife Crime Conference hosted on 27 June in Milton Keynes.

Matthew Barber, visited No5 Young People to find out how almost £10,000 of funding from the PCC’s Community Fund is helping to support young people at risk of permanent exclusion from school.