Going wireless with public space video surveillance cameras could halve the cost of transmission, a council has been told.
Giving up the hard-wired system will allow for cheaper annual maintenance and transmission costs, a report told Arun District Council’s housing and wellbeing committee. These have been estimated at £9,000 a year, compared to £20,000 for current transmission and maintenance for CCTV across Arun.
The West Sussex council has its 19-camera CCTV network provided by BT. As a report to councillors pointed out, BT will not be supporting any CCTV system operated via digital or analogue circuits from April 2024. BT are willing to provide an alternative solution from April 2024 at a significant increase in cost to the council, councillors were told; that annual cost of £20,000 and was estimated to rise to more than £100,000 if BT were to remain the provider.
Arun (based in Bognor Regis; pictured is Littlehampton) is in a partnership with Sussex Police for the provision and operation of public facing CCTV. By agreement the police are responsible for all aspects of CCTV handling, including data control and the maintenance of hardware. The annual costs of maintenance and transmissions are then forwarded on to the county’s councils. In Arun district, the council owns the public facing CCTV, while the transmission of images occurs via BT operated infrastructure.
Sussex Police have sourced a provider, Chroma Vision, to provide a wireless solution. After such an upgrade, Sussex Police would be handing back governance and data control to the councils in the county. Many of them replied that that was too short notice; hence Sussex Police have agreed to retain the governance responsibility for public facing CCTV, where required, until April 2025.
Significantly, the council is looking to get some money for this capital spend via the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which could cover half of the costs, councillors were told; and the Safer Streets funding from the Home Office, via the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner.
Looking elsewhere, Buckinghamshire Council is the single, ‘unitary’ council that replaced the county council and some four district councils, which typically in England looked after public space CCTV. That means the new body has had to work out what to do with previously independently-run CCTV systems – and not only on-street cameras, but body worn, and cameras for traffic management and running automatic number plate recognition (ANPR). Hence a strategy document, which addresses how much of the equipment is ten or more years old and ‘at the end of life’ and in need of replacing; besides how to ‘join up’ the equipment, and ‘a plan for continued investment in CCTV’.
As for where the council stands, it has one control room in High Wycombe that looks after 222 CCTV cameras covering public spaces and car parks; given that the council has some 500 cameras, it follows that most are covering its own buildings and for traffic management. The control room is not staffed 24-7: it has operators between the hours of 8am and 4am on Fridays and Saturdays; and between 8am and 11pm other days.
According to the strategy, the council sees scope for the control room doing more, such as responding to lone worker alarms, and fire and panic alarms.
