Who runs it in a town
In a shopping centre the management company holds the licence. In a town it is whoever already speaks for the traders: a town centre committee or town team, a traders’ or business association, a chamber of commerce, a Business Improvement District, or the owner or manager of a retail park.
One person acts as the organiser, the role a centre manager plays. They add the businesses taking part, give each one its sign-up sheet, name the Garda liaison and see the dashboard.
What is the same
- Staff log an incident on their own phones in under a minute, for their own shop only.
- An incident logged as happening now alerts every other shop taking part, so a group working its way up the street is expected next door.
- The organiser gets a dashboard by shop, by incident type and by estimated loss.
- Every Monday one brief goes to the local Garda liaison, covering every incident logged, reported or not.
- The same rules: no names, no faces, no watch list, and ordinary incidents delete themselves after 90 days.
What is different in a town
- Shops are listed by name and address. A unit number is optional.
- There may be no security team. Live alerts go to the other shops, and to anyone the organiser gives the security role: a town warden, a member of the committee, or nobody.
- There is no service charge. The group pays for the licence from its own funds and decides how the cost is shared.
- The licence holder has to be a body that can sign for it. An informal committee needs an organisation behind it, such as an association, a chamber or a company, to be responsible for the records.
- Lookout does not depend on CCTV. The record is what staff saw and wrote down at the time.
Why it matters more on a street
A shopping centre has doors, a radio and a security desk. A street has none of them, and the shop two doors up often has a different landlord, a different trade and no reason to be in touch. A shared log is the first time those shops have one picture, and the weekly brief is the first time the local Garda station sees it as one picture too.
What it costs, and what comes with it
The same tiers as a shopping centre, by the number of shops taking part: €195 a month up to 25 shops, €395 a month for 26 to 60, and €695 a month for 61 and more, billed annually after a 90-day trial.
A DPIA, a participation agreement and a plain-English privacy notice are being prepared and reviewed, and will be provided before go-live.
Lookout was built first for shopping centres. A town centre would be the first of its kind on Lookout, and we would set it up with you.
What Lookout records, and what it never will →