Tom Cook speaks after four small traders inside Bovis House were ransacked
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00:00Okay Tom, so can you just tell us how you feel about the burglaries that have happened
00:12this weekend?
00:13Incredibly angry. We're a not-for-profit organisation and we help pre-start and new start small businesses
00:23so the fact that we've been targeted and the businesses that have been targeted is more
00:29than upsetting. This isn't a large corporate entity because they can't now trade. The stock
00:36that they've stolen has such a massive disproportionate impact to what it would if there was a cop stealing
00:42in a larger shop. It just exacerbates how awful it is. Again frustrating from our perspective
00:51we try to make the place more secure, more safe but I feel like at this stage we're almost
00:58pulling our air out. How do we further deter people?
01:01And how are you supporting the businesses affected?
01:04To be honest we've been blown away by the level of public support from people who aren't involved
01:09in the organisation. People in the town have been amazing offering to give the businesses
01:15money for replacement products. Obviously we'd said that anything that has been replaced will
01:21step in and replace but what we're looking at now is how we can help them in different ways if
01:27the products that have already been stolen are being replaced and whether that's in the form of
01:34free rent or capital investment anything that we can do we will.
01:38Will it deter you from what you're doing here?
01:40Absolutely not. In starting the project we were frustrated with the economy, with the disparity in
01:51support for larger organisations. We started to solve a problem and if that problem gets worse
01:59or you know changes somehow then it's not going to deter us all it's going to do is sort of
02:04I suppose adapt our offering if that makes sense. Yeah so not at all.