Why is it that business crime - or crimes against businesses as I prefer to call it - so often seems to be ignored?

This is something which we are all familiar with - the graffiti, the vandalism, the intimidation, the theft, the physical attack on our employees, the arson attack and many others.

Often businesses are seen as inanimate objects - it is only a business so it is covered by insurance!

Not always true, and often for the so called 'petty crimes' it is not worth the business owners' time and effort in even reporting it.

This then creates an even bigger problem, since the non-reporting of any crime rebounds against businesses as most police forces and the Home Office do not have crimes against businesses logged as separate records from domestic crime in the first place, and at the present time the Government does not yet have it as a performance standard indicator (PSI).

If they could see the size of the problem though, then they could help us to deal with it more effectively.

Over two thirds of businesses state that they have suffered from a crime in the last 12 months, yet less than one third report these.

Very often because the response they currently get is so dismissive.

If less than one third of crimes against businesses are reported then the true cost and effect against businesses is grossly understated, and if it is not properly stated or unknown then it cannot be dealt with effectively.

Of course the other side of the coin is that if it is reported then it may mean that insurance premiums rise even more.

All of this impacts on the prices we all pay through the goods we buy, yet it is up to all of us to work together to combat the effects of crimes against businesses.

These crimes seem to be growing alarmingly due in part to the success of town centre schemes in moving the crime away and out from the town and city centres to the industrial estates and business parks - not only in our urban areas, but into the rural areas of the region as well.

Here in the West Midlands we have the West Midlands Regional Business Crime Forum which is bringing together the business community under the West Midlands Business Council.

With the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Government Office of the West Midlands and regional development agency Advantage West Midlands among others to deal with this issue which is the first of its kind in the UK.

Businesses are not the inanimate or faceless things that people often perceive them to be; rather they are owned and run by people, they bring jobs and prosperity to everyone across the whole of the region.

Criminals are costing our businesses £123 million each and every year.

Together we can work through our local structures to ensure that this menace is tackled properly for the first time and see the actual benefit of getting involved and working with everyone else to ensure that this menace which blights us all is properly reported and dealt with.

This will, in turn, benefit our businesses, our employees, and our communities as a whole. Together we can beat crime against business.