Former Guardsman and Sainsburys security lead to manage NBCS

The UK’s National Business Crime Solution (NBCS), a not for profit initiative that enables the sharing of data between law enforcement agencies and the business community in order to reduce crime, has announced that Daniel Hardy has been appointed as its new Managing Director.

A well-known and respected figure with over 20 years of crime prevention experience, Hardy is tasked with taking NBCS to the next stage of its development and fulfilling its role in supporting businesses and the police in the fight against offenders.

‘I am passionate about partnership and preventing crime through the better use of intelligence sharing and technology,’ commented Hardy. ‘As such, I want to cement the position of NBCS as a critical friend of business, the police service and all business reduction partnerships, by furthering the use of the national business model for all those affected by crime.”

Hardy served five years in the Grenadier Guards before gaining experience in the private security industry. He then spent 13 years with the Metropolitan Police, rising to the position of Acting Detective Inspector on Specialist Crime Directorate and running Operation Vanguard. He subsequently became Head of Risk at G4S and, prior to his current role with NBCS, he was Corporate Crime and Security Lead at Sainsbury’s, where his responsibility included all of the company’s stores, corporate locations and distribution facilities around the world.

Hardy’s appointment comes at a particularly exciting time, after NBCS secured significant government funding as part of the Police Transformation Fund, a Home Office programme that marks a real opportunity for police leaders and police and crime commissioners to respond to the changing nature of crime. The award of a six-figure sum was in recognition of NBCS’s success in supporting the police in the battle against business crime and will enable it to make new appointments, and implement a comprehensive marketing and awareness campaign, including a new corporate identity.

In light of the government funding, one of Hardy’s immediate priorities will be to make NBCS sustainable. Doing so will mean that it is able to operate as an entirely self-sufficient, self-governing entity, which is totally funded and controlled by members, while being open to all businesses and government enterprises.

As such he will seek to increase the member base of NBCS and meet its stated strategic objectives. This will ensure that NBCS is recognised by both the police and business community as the most effective intelligence sharing solution in the UK and is able to bring together information to identify and tackle the full nature and extent of the threats faced by businesses. Through a supportive operating model, NBCS will be in a position to issue relevant and timely information on crime trends that enables members to take preventative action and allows them to engage with the police service to combat cross border organised criminal networks.

Tim Edwards, Chair of the NBCS board of directors, concluded, ‘It gives me great pleasure to have Dan as Managing Director of NBCS, following a robust recruitment process. He served on the board for six months in a Vice-Chair capacity, which gave us a real opportunity to assess what he could contribute, and we were unanimously impressed. He has excellent leadership skills, played a key role in developing our current strategy and has forged superb relationships with both existing and future stakeholders, which are certain to deliver immediate benefits. I’m looking forward to working with him and Catherine Bowen, our Policy and Stakeholder Director, and believe we have a very strong executive team to drive NBCS forward.’