A county town’s public space CCTV could go to a ‘more sustainable delivery model’, according to a council. In plainer English, Shropshire Council’s preferred option for Shrewsbury, that’s gone out to public consultation until September 4, is to have a passive monitored CCTV system whereby cameras record 24 hours, ‘but with no active monitoring’. The council points to its need to make savings of £62.5m this year, and public space CCTV is a ‘non-statutory’ council service; in other words, a council doesn’t have to provide it by law, like waste collection and libraries.
Shropshire Council has been doing the CCTV service for Shrewsbury town centre since 2009, when the county went to a unitary local government structure. Shropshire is under contract to provide monitoring to the small town of Craven Arms. In other parts of largely rural Shropshire, any CCTV is run by the town or parish council.
What’s proposed, to save £334,000 – by cutting from the current CCTV budget of £600,000, won’t mean an empty control room although that was considered; as was an option of a ‘volunteer run system possibly operating at key times’, as in operation in the north Shropshire town of Oswestry. As a report to councillors stated, the service has a ‘dual nature’, as operators also answer out of hours calls, such as stair lifts repairs or from people locked in car parks. The report stated: “The CCTV team also answer calls to the council made outside office hours. These are emergency calls that cannot reasonably or safely wait until offices are next open, mainly calls for urgent highways issues that may involve risk to health or safety, calls from people who face immediate homelessness that night and the overflow of calls to social care where vulnerable adults or children may be at risk. This is a service that needs to continue.”
A report to councillors stated that the CCTV system – 39 fixed camera locations in and around the town centre – is ‘now in good shape’ as it was ‘recently updated with new additional cameras continuing to be added’. However, the council has no budget to continue this beyond July 31, 2024. By agreement, West Mercia Police’s Serious and Organised Crime Unit retain the ability, as required, to access the system for live monitoring. The council has asked ‘partners’ if they want to pay towards ‘some active monitoring’ such as for football matches (as Shrewsbury play in the third tier of English football they will have a home match against nearby Birmingham City after that club’s relegation last season).
As for the value of the service, while the report acknowledged that ‘actively monitored CCTV service provides many benefits in towns such as Shrewsbury’, it also said that the ‘council does not hold information as to the outcome of any CCTV intervention as to whether it has contributed to successful prosecutions or prevented criminal activity or anti-social behaviour’.
Shrewbsury’s business improvement district (BID) has said it’s ‘concerned that the proposed cuts to CCTV are likely to lead to an increase in anti-social behaviour and crime, decreased river safety and an increase in risk of harm to vulnerable individuals’.
Councillor Robert Macey, Cabinet member for culture and digital, described it as ‘one of a number of very tough decisions that we do not want to make but we have to if we are to survive financially’.
For the consultation, visit https://www.shropshire.gov.uk/cctvshrews.
Photo by Mark Rowe: outside Shrewsbury rail station.
