We are working with our partner agencies such as social services, health and education to help protect a small group of females who are being reported missing quite regularly. We have recently taken part in a multi-agency meeting where new accommodation has been found for one of the individuals, which will be more suited to their needs and provide a higher level of safeguarding for them.

We have been made aware of an increase in shop theft in the East of Yeovil and are working with local retailers to help tackle this problem. 

Thefts from shops affects all the community, resulting in price rises impacting individuals, families and communities. As well as the direct impact on the business and its employees. We are committed to tackling prolific shoplifting, which continues to have a detrimental impact on local businesses and the wider community.

We believe that shop lifting is still under-reported by businesses, and we are working closer with the retailers to try to help them with what they need to be able to report crimes more easily, so we can have accurate data on what has happened and who are the regular shoplifters for the area.

We have a number of ongoing investigations into prolific shop lifters, which are progressing well and we are hoping to bring some charges against them. Once we have some updates we will share on here. We encourage retailers to continue reporting incidents to us.

The town centre team is currently focusing on Anti-social behaviour and drug use occurring in the town centre this also links in to shoplifting offences

We are working with various partner agencies from the NHS, addiction services, council and Yeovil Crime reduction team to priorities individual offenders and problem solve issues around them and deal with offenders positively and proactively.

We have various orders already imposed on individuals in the town centre that ensure conditions are applied to  mitigate their behaviour these range from Community protection warnings, Community protection notices and Criminal behaviour orders.

Officers and PCSO’s have continued foot patrols in the town. Two more prolific shoplifters have been arrested and two more charged since the last update. We are liaising with our Business Crime colleagues and have worked with partners to ensure suitable placements are now being sought for vulnerable members of our community.