Simon Gordon on the idea behind FaceWatch...

“I started it with a few friends last year. I’d been talking about it for a year and a half, my wife was fed up with me talking about it!

If you’re a pub or a shop or some kind of premises you subscribe to FaceWatch and pay £15 a month for a small place, up to £100 if you’re a big company, and you can report any low-level crime on the system.

You upload the footage, which goes straight to the police rather than what happens now: coming out and collecting discs, filling out forms, taking statements, etc

“You upload the footage, about a minute's worth of CCTV or images and that goes straight to the police rather than what happens now: having to come out and collect discs, fill out forms and take statements and all that sort of thing. There is no crime reporting system like this in the world as far as I’m aware.”

On the response to the idea...

“We're talking to these massive companies who want us to join them. We don't even have any customers or Card Protection Plan signed up with us.

“They said if it’s a FaceWatch crime they will cancel the victim's cards, reissue them, put them through to their mobile-phone companies... do everything for them all free of charge. That was even before we even had any customers.

It was only an idea at that time. We’ve had the same sort of reaction from lots of other businesses.

“Kit Malthouse, the Deputy Major of London, has just come up with a fantastic idea. Yesterday he sent us an email because we asked him for a quote for endorsement and he said: “FaceWatch is fantastic and I urge all businesses to take it up.”

On future expansion...

“We’re moving outside London very rapidly so I think this is something really groundbreaking.

“I’ve been speaking to people in the US and Sweden and we were on French television two days ago. I’ve already had an enquiry from someone there, saying: 'This sounds fantastic, can I set it up in France?'”