The public sector is going to have to substantially reduce its costs, and that includes council CCTV control rooms, a seminar heard. One London borough has partnered with the private sector – and is suggesting other CCTV users might like to come on board. Mark Rowe reports.
Budget rationalisation. “That’s cuts to you and me,” Maureen Holkham said. She’s a councillor for the Conservative-led London borough of Bexley; the deputy director neighbourhoods and communities, which includes CCTV and community safety. She sought to improve performance of CCTV; and reduce its operating costs. The axe hanging over all public space CCTV and local government in general: budget cuts of up to 30 or 35 per cent in the next few years. She suggested the south-east London borough might be a model for other local authorities. Bexley has low crime, but high fear of street crime. One answer to fear of crime, as she said, has been CCTV; and Bexley’s control room dated from 1996. When installed, it was considered good stuff; and it expanded over the years, to a 240-camera system. But as with many councils, as the equipment aged, so the control room became crowded with banks of monitor screens and was in need of upgrading; yet in 2009 the council was ‘rationalising’.
The borough had three options. Build a new control room in-house; share a service with another borough; or outsource, with a private sector partner. Maureen Holkham said that Bexley buying its own kit never really appealed; she feared an ‘IKEA moment’ of finding boxes of things did not fit or ‘talk’ to each other. She did not feel the council had someone with the technical skills to ensure the council got an up to date new control room: “I wanted a high technology partner to make sure the kit did fit and talk to each other.” And, as she added, that partner would keep the technology up to date. “I was looking to transfer responsibility for manning and staffing the control room ,” she said, as councils are generally not geared to running 24-7 services (and the private sector is). And yes, Bexley was looking at outsourcing to reduce costs in the long term, and, if they were lucky (such was the original thinking), to generate some income. The requirement for income generation was put into the contract in hope at first; but became critical to the project going through. The tender specified a new, digital control room; either in a council or contractor’s building; and the contractor to do repairs and maintenance. Councillors who had to pass the plan – usually parochial about jobs – were reportedly not bothered about whether control room staff were based in Bexley or not (although maybe drawing the line at overseas). Also specified was a 65-35 quality-price split. And rather than specifying particular pieces of equipment, the tender spoke of what work the control room had to do, and what crime results it had to deliver.
What were the problems? With doing something different, she suggested, persuading elected councillors (even of your own party) can be difficult as they can be conservative (with a small c) about spending public money, and may beware of a new way of doing something. The contract process – through the European OJEU route – was by the book and time-consuming. Some 50 expressions of interest came down to three (unnamed) international companies, ‘household names’, she said. Drawing up the contract required original thinking, she reported, and keeping the project on track took much manager time and commitment. But once Bexley was in the contract – with Siemens – the control room was running within two or three months: “I was astonished how quick it [the control room] was put together.” It went live on March 18. And a Siemens-led ‘marketing campaign’ is under way, asking other London boroughs and others with control rooms of their own if they would like to visit, and have their CCTV run by Bexley.
While this is, as Maureen Holkham said, ‘innovative’, it’s also a case of (as she put it) ‘we innovate or die!’. Or to use some local government jargon, it’s part of the ‘shared service agenda’. With a lot less money, councils are having to look at sharing services. As she said, councils like to feel in control of their services. But costs will be so tight, she suggested, councils either share services, or don’t have them. With other parts of her ‘communities’ portfolio, she is looking to other councils to in effect provide a service.
As she said, the idea of councils sharing services has been around for years. She did not go into the human, psychological side of people loath to outsource CCTV and hence close ‘their’ control room. But Siemens on behalf of Bexley is approaching business parks, pubs and clubs, housing associations and others using concierges, and shopping centres, besides the London boroughs, most with their own control room. She gave a total of 100 CCTV control rooms in London, some duplicating services. When this number was queried by Professional Security, she clarified that was a ‘rough estimate’, taking in police, Transport for London (TfL), and retail, to name three. Speaking at the Siemens ‘Answers for the environment’ two-day show at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry, she did not go into the implications for public space CCTV. It is early days. Briefly put, nothing technically prevents control rooms being abroad – as she said. The more that share the service, the more savings for everybody, she said. Will economic necessity drive change? Will voters and councillors in one region trust monitoring done miles, maybe hundreds of miles away? As for civil liberties issues, she spoke of doing public consultation at every stage of the project. She suggested that council public space CCTV, monitored alongside shopping malls and TfL’s road cameras, could lead to a ‘much more comprehensive service, and that has got to enable us to do more in terms of reducing crime and increasing confidence’.
