Agenda item

To receive a report giving an update on the CCTV service

The Head of Community Services presented a CCTV service update to the Committee. The purpose was to update Members on the progress made with the CCTV Control Room capital works and provide details on the future operation.

In April 2011 three legacy CCTV systems were moved be to housed together in a single place at Macclesfield Town Hall however the three systems continued to operate separately. Since April 2011 the CCTV service had been working on developing a single system for the whole of Cheshire East, the completion of which was expected in March 2012.

There were several benefits to the new system including 24 hour a day, every day of the year, monitoring of cameras across the borough and bringing the Council’s out of hours services into the Council’s services rather than contracting out to a supplier. Other developments included an Evidence Locker which was an electronic system that could be used to provide evidential footage directly to Police on request securely via the internet which removed the need to deliver tapes by hand. This allowed CCTV to provide more timely support to the Police.

The management of the Council’s Urban Traffic Control cameras had also been brought into the network which allowed any of 300 cameras to be used to support Highways department in traffic management. The control of cameras was going to be transferred town by town from the old systems to the new Control Room over a period of weeks and there would be a formal launch of the new CCTV Control Room with media coverage in May or June.

Once the Control Room was set up there would be an audit of the entire camera network to determine whether the camera locations were fit for purpose.

Members of the Committee asked questions and the following points arose:

·         The Police had been aware of the changes to the CCTV Control Room and were consulted on changes early on in the process.

·         The audit of 300 cameras would take 3-6 months. Each camera’s location needed to be justified by statistics but the possible impact of removing cameras from an area also needed to be considered.

·         All CCTV operators were on the same pay grade. There was a team leader role but that person was working alongside the other staff and there hadn’t been a need to employ a shift supervisor as CCTV staff worked together as a team.         

·         Evidence Locker allowed Police to download evidence at their police station and evidence gathering was continuous while data was downloading.       

·         Computer software could be used to connect cameras so that if one camera picked up an incident, then all other cameras in the area would also move to pick up the incident and follow the movement of an incident to ensure continuous monitoring and evidence gathering.

·         When audit of cameras was conducted Members of the Council would want to be kept informed of the justification for moving cameras to help them communicate with their residents about their concerns about the removal of cameras.           

·         How an area was lit at night should be a factor in determining the location of cameras. Cameras were not effective in the dark and street lighting would need to be sufficient in order to record a quality image.          

·         Tree obscuration should be dealt with as a priority due to the issues it could cause to camera visibility. There needed to be a plan in place for dealing with tree obscuration in a timely manner to ensure cameras were effective.           

·         Members wanted to know more about the customer and client receipts income of £12,253 that was shown in the budget. Officers were unable to explain the figure at the time but clarification would be sought.

RESOLVED: - That the Head of Community Services be requested to return to the Committee at the next meeting with a report containing the following: a break down of the CCTV budget spending over the 2012/13 municipal year; information about the training of CCTV staff; current progress on the audit of CCTV cameras including methodology and the criteria upon which audits are based upon.