In the spring we featured how Cornwall has to work out how its towns will monitor their mainly small public space CCTV systems, now that the county council has pulled out of monitoring. Another county appears to be in the same boat, writes Mark Rowe.
Surrey Police have cited financial and operational reasons, for no longer monitoring CCTV from their control room in Reigate. For about 20 years, the Surrey force – unusually, because most CCTV monitoring has been by local government – has covered the costs of monitoring the CCTV system in Mole Valley and other parts of the county. Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) has paid £40,000 each year for signalling and maintenance costs. Mole Valley has some 51 CCTV cameras in public spaces such as parks, car parks and high streets; in Ashtead, Bookham, Dorking (railway station car park, pictured) and Leatherhead. Operationally, the force says it’s largely using video evidence gathered from mobile phones, dash cams in vehicles, and house doorbells using Ring or similar networked products, rather than on-street CCTV. Financially, Surrey Police say that they will make a contribution towards the cost of CCTV, if councils choose to take it over. Hence Mole Valley council is running a community survey. The council is proposing four options in its consultation, including three for the retention of between 20 to 30 cameras and an option to withdraw provision altogether. The consultation notes that Waverley and Tandridge councils do not provide public realm CCTV; more than half of the district’s cameras (28) have not been viewed, either live or retrospectively, between April 2022 and March 2023; and that overall the council has to make savings, so that spending on a new control room and cameras is not an option.
Mole Valley is running the survey – visit molevalley.gov.uk/cctvreview – until November 20.
Councillor Keira Vyvyan-Robinson, Mole Valley Cabinet Member for Property and Projects, said: “We need to make important decisions about our future use of CCTV and we need your views to help inform what we do next. As a council we do not use the footage from CCTV to provide our services and like every council, we are having to review all of our costs and scrutinise what provides value for money. Surrey Police has made a decision to move away from traditional CCTV for operational and financial reasons, and we need to consider whether and to what extent it is the district council’s role to continue this.
“We have figures for CCTV usage which show that over the last 12 months, in most cases the number of times a camera has been viewed is less than ten times. Does this represent value for money for our residents, or is CCTV such a valued asset that we should continue to fund it, despite the police withdrawing? Your feedback will help us answer these difficult questions.”
For Surrey Police, Mole Valley District Commander Inspector James Green said: “The decision for local authorities to take over the provision and monitoring of CCTV was part of the Surrey Open Space CCTV strategy 2017-2022.
“We have provided MVDC with data to help inform their proposals and will continue to support the provision of CCTV in the district. Our data show that public CCTV cameras in the district are seldom used as a detecting factor in crime.”
