With NRF (Neighbourhood Renewal Funding) being used in other high crime areas of Mansfield to tackle house burglaries, including installing house alarms for free en-masse, NAG felt that our small corner of Titchfield Ward was under threat of burglars moving into our area (although these fears were unfounded - see Crime Displacement in Resources Section). So we decided to tackle local house burglary rates ourselves by producing and promoting our own property marking kit. In addition, we chose to run a competition alongside the kit to try to encourage greater participation. So all we needed now was funding, a competition prize and the necessary kit components.

Funding
After careful planning, trimming costs as low as we could, we submitted an application to the Notts Community Foundation which was successful and gave us the go-ahead to get cracking on the scheme.

Sticky Situation
NAG chose to compile a simple yet effective property marking kit, yet at a cost that would be significantly cheaper than buying an off-the-shelf kit.

Window stickers
(prices as of April 2004)
2000 x window sticker, 64mm x 64mm, Black print on gloss Yellow vinyl perm, artwork on the enclosed floppy disk. (property marking sticker designed to be stuck on the inside of a window) -
Quoted price: £110.03 / Plate charge: £12.00 / Carriage: FREE / plus vat

1000 x window sticker, 64mm x 64mm, Black print on gloss Yellow vinyl perm overlaminated, artwork on the enclosed floppy disk. (property marking sticker as per above but adhesive backed, designed to be stuck on a shed or garage door) - Quoted price    £78.55 / Plate charge: £12.00 / Carriage: FREE/ plus vat

The original layout was created using QuarkXpress then converted to Acrobat PDF format for e-mailing to the Marsh Lables Ltd for printing.

Ultra-Violet Marker Pen
The heart of the kit is the UV marker pen, which writes using invisible ultra violet ink. These were sourced from a company called Solon Security, who specialise in supplying security and personal safety equipment to organisations such as Councils and other community and voluntary organisations. Basically, they were the cheapest supplier in the country, with an amazing price of just 19p each!

600 UV pens were ordered, with 300 being supplied for free courtesy of our local Police Force, to whom we are most grateful. In addition, we also ordered a cheap bullet-style UV torch to identify marked property.

User Instructions/Competition Entry - An A6 sized card with instructions on how to mark your property, together with a competition to win a prize. The card was printed by Catford Print, based in London, who also print our quarterly newsletter. They are VERY competitive when it comes to printing. Click here to see an Acrobat PDF of the card we produced.

ARGOS Deliver the Goods
The prize selected was an Olympus C-150 digital camera and a Hewlett Packard 145 photo printer. This was selected as the prize because we believed that almost everyone takes photo's at some time but many would not have access to a digital camera and the addition of a standalone printer that did not require a PC would encourage participation in the scheme. The prize was kindly funded in full by Argos. The Secretary wrote to Argos head office explaining the scheme and asked if they could help in any way. Little did we expect to receive £200 in vouchers! And, because Argos had lowered their prices, we were able to purchase not only the camera and printer but also a battery charger, spare batteries and an extra memory card.

Putting it all together
Once all the items were collated, the kit was placed in a grip seal bag and was then delivered as a free gift inside the next available newsletter. To stop the gift from falling out, each newsletter was also sealed inside a self-seal clear A4 plastic mailer.

The End Result
So here we have it...the finished article. An eagle-eyed reader will notice that the bag contains another leaflet entitled 'Coded for Keeps'. 900 of these were acquired from the Home Office. Surprisingly, all I did was e-mail them and ask if our group could have them and they said yes! The e-mail address is public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.