Agenda item

The Community Safety and Licensing Service Manager will give the Committee an overview of the Council’s CCTV provision.                                                                  (Enclosure)

The Community Safety and Licensing Service Manager gave a presentation on the Council’s CCTV provision:

·         The CCTV control room opened on 18 June 1997 and has since provided a service 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

·         The service was run by 10 members of staff and one supervisor. Arrangements were in place to provide cover for unexpected absence.

·         All CCTV staff were trained and registered with the Security Industry Authority (SIA).

·         Since September 2012 and the closure of the care centre, the service has also delivered the Council’s out of hours service.

·         The team monitored a range of cameras including town centres, car parks, highways (on behalf of Lincolnshire County Council) and automatic number plate recognition (on behalf of Lincolnshire Police).

·         There were 15 cameras in Stamford, 8 in Bourne, 4 in the Deepings and 32 in Grantham. 8 cameras were also monitored on behalf of North Kesteven District Council.

·         All cameras record digital colour images, which meant footage was of a good quality. All images were retained for 28 days.

·         Shopwatch and pubwatch radios enabled the team to contact businesses across the district about incidents in their area.

·         When operators witnessed an offence in progress, they would inform the police and continue to monitor the situation.

·         CCTV had direct contact with local police officers so were able to provide live intelligence. Major incidents were called into the Force control room.

·         A feed from CCTV cameras could also be sent to Lincolnshire Police so they could monitor live incidents.

·         The Community Safety Partnership had purchased a mobile CCTV unit; this had been gifted to the police and was operated by police offices and police community support officers.

·         In 2012 the team reported monitoring approximately 3,500 live incidents which had led to 850 arrests.

Some members asked about the role of CCTV operators in respect of public order offences during the night time economy. Operators would report any offence they witnessed to the police, who would attend if available. The police had powers to issue fixed penalty notices for public order offences.

The service had made a number of savings included absorbing additional work, the re-tendering of the maintenance contract and reviewing and refining the shift patterns. In response to questions from Councillors, Mr Jones stated that Lincolnshire Police made no financial contribution to the provision of CCTV, although a small amount of capital investment had been made. Members suggested as the primary beneficiaries of the service, Lincolnshire Police should be asked to contribute to the running costs. It was suggested that the issue should be raised with the Police and Crime Commissioner through the Police and Crime Panel (chaired by Councillor Wootten) to establish support from other district councils.

Recommendation:

To request Councillor Wootten places an item on the Police and Crime Panel agenda to discuss opportunities for a police contribution to the funding of CCTV.

Mr Jones added that officers from South Kesteven were playing a leading role in assessing the feasibility of having one or two control rooms to provide CCTV cover for the whole county. This was a priority of the Police and Crime Commissioner which was highlighted in the Police and Crime Plan.

The Committee agreed, following the presentation, to disband the working group set up to consider CCTV. Members agreed that the group would be reinstated should any issues arise in the future.