In May 2023, Police Scotland’s Rural and Acquisitive Crime Unit launched the Scottish Partnership Against Acquisitive Crime (SPAACE). SPAACE is a multi-agency partnership involving key organisations collectively working to tackle acquisitive crime, defined as high-volume crime often targeting the most vulnerable.
The Scottish Plant Owners Association (SPOA) was one of the partners in the partnership which also included Crimestoppers, HM Revenue & Customs, Neighbourhood Watch Scotland, Police Crime Prevention Initiatives (PCPI), Police Scotland, Retailers Against Crime, SCOTTS Trading Standards, Scottish Government, Take Five To Stop Fraud, Trading Standards Scotland and Secured by Design.
Thanks to the generous loan by Scot JCB, a Police Scotland and SPOA liveried digger set off on a tour of Scotland to raise awareness of plant, fuel, tool and machinery theft in rural Scotland.
Dubbed the #MachineOnAMission, the digger covered all corners of Scotland from as far north as Orkney, down to the Borders and everywhere in between, including Fort William and Cairnryan on the west coast and Dundee and Fife on the east coast. At each location, staff from the Police and representatives from the SPOA ran free information events giving out advice on the measures plant owners can take to avoid becoming a victim of crime.
Whale-like-fish helped to raise awareness of the Machine On A Mission via social media and local media relations relevant to each location. Working with Police Scotland, the team also put together a story highlighting that acquisitive crime was getting worse.
The story highlighted concerning statistics including:
- Acquisitive crime in 2023 was 12.2% higher than five-year mean.
- Theft of motor vehicles (which covers all mechanically propelled vehicles from a private car to a dump truck) has reached the highest levels recorded during the reporting period, increasing by 13.3% in 2022/23 and up by 11.3% so far for 2023/24 – this equates to an average of 14 thefts of motor vehicles a day.
- Between 01/04/2022 and 31/03/2023, theft of agricultural and forestry machinery, plant and quad bike/ATVs was the most frequent crime.
Whale-like-fish was able to generate media coverage in BBC Radio Scotland Highlands and Islands, BBC Alba (TV), Tay FM (syndicated across Bauer Media’s Scottish radio network), Inverness Courier, Ross-shire Journal, Highland Times, Northern Scot, as well as key trade media for the plant industry.
The campaign also resulted in more plant owners signing up to Construction Watch, a free service and part of Neighbourhood Watch, which provides alerts and actionable advice and measures to take if acquisitive crime has taken place recently and a greater sharing of intelligence on recent crime in rural areas.
Do you have a campaign you’d like PR support for? Get in touch on hello@whalelikefish.co.uk to see how we could help.