A London borough has gone digital with its CCTV recording. We hear from the satisfied end user, consultant, and manufacturer.
John Purcell, Security Manager at the London Borough of Hillingdon, admits: ?We haven?t got the same problems as the some of the inner London boroughs?, but makes the point that Hillingdon is the second largest of the capital?s 32 boroughs, and adds: ?There?s crime wherever there?s shops.? John was asked by the then Corporate Director to take on interim management for security and CCTV about 18 months ago from Angela Stangoe, when she moved to the BBC as part of their security management team. His brief was to review the whole concept of how the authority provided security and CCTV services and recommend how to go forward. He has a local authority, and before that military background, and admits he has been on a learning curve with CCTV and the technology now available. Hillingdon?s security and CCTV is provided in house within the Finance and Property group, but this is about to change as part of his review process. The service will now be split into two groups. CCTV operations will become part of the Environment group, and the front of house reception and car parks manning will come under the Facilities Manager within the Property and Finance group. John says: ?We had a small CCTV control room looking after just the Uxbridge High Street CCTV with about 12 cameras; we have now have about 65 with provision for another 30 to 40 in the next three to four months. It?s gone from a small, one-off scheme to several with potential for growth.? There?s a new bespoke control room, official opening September 2001, and cameras cover three of the borough?s four main shopping centres, the council depot, car parks, and the Uxbridge Civic Centre. We are the first London borough to go down the digital recording route and we chose the Vigilant solution because it really did meet our criteria entirely. Recording at 12.5 frames per second on every single camera means that nothing is missed since the ?real time? playback is of a very high quality – it makes it so much easier to capture activity in our busy town centres. The sheduled recording requires less human intervention than conventional analogue recording and the storage capacity offered by the SCSI RAID hard drives means Vigilant is ideal for mission critical applications such as town centres. We were also impressed that such a high specification system was so very easy to use and this has meant that the learning curve for our operators hasn?t been too steep. It is truly an incredible leap on from our previous technology. The instant retrieval feature has already proved invaluable. There have been numerous times already where we have reviewed incidents and subsequently given the information to the police – all within a matter of minutes. This means that we no longer have to spend hours searching through a number of different video tapes trying to locate an incident. The support we have had from Vigilant Technology has been particularly impressive. They have helped us out tremendously with getting the system up and running so quickly. The Vigilant system has certainly exceeded our expectations. The fact that we,re already looking to expand the system after such a short space of time speaks volumes for our satisfaction with Vigilant. John appointed Tim Walton of CIS as his project manager for the various new schemes and admits he would have been like a fish out of water without him : ?Tim has been with me from the very start of the projects, his knowledge and assistance from the specification,design and installation aspects is something that we could not have done without, and I am truly indebted to him for his support.? John praises also the Metropolitan Police and local chamber of commerce: ?It?s a combined effort by everybody. I have set up local liaison groups with the [Met] crime prevention officers Richard Evans and Mike Smooker and my colleagues in the shopping centres, to see if we can set up a users? group, because we all need to sing from the same song sheet.? With that in mind too he is a member of the LRCNG (London Region CCTV Management Group) which meets regularly, shares information and has guest speakers. On the subject of information sharing, the Hillingdon command centre has a telephone line to the police and a slave CCTV link. ?It?s a two-way process – local bobbies contact my control room to say there are youths causing problems, and can we keep an eye on it, if it is in the range of CCTV.? John hopes for more collecting of information – feedback from the Met, for example, of whether an incident resulted in a prosecution, so operators get to hear of good feed-back. He raises the question of Best Value – being able to audit the service and show what it does (last month we reported Lincoln CCTV manager Simon Walters, of TAG, who is proposing bench-marking for council CCTV systems). John, who works for the chief executive’s department, also advises on health and safety, and catering and cleaning.
Hillingdon has chosen the Vigilant system from manufacturers Vigilant Technology UK. Tim Walton of CIS points out that cameras were first installed four years ago to cover Uxbridge, monitored from the Civic Centre. Other business centres in the borough, Hayes and Rusilip, gained cameras: ?The control room was clearly not going to be large enough,? Tim recalls. While some cameras covering around the Civic Centre are recorded on tape, the town centre surveillance cameras are digitally recorded. Tim says: ?The high frame rate that the Vigilant system offers, 12.5 frames a second, is crucial for capturing activity in busy town centres.? Incidents recorded can be exported onto CD-Rom and viewed at once by police thanks to a supplied media player.
Background
The borough?s community safety strategy 1999-2002 between the borough council, the Metropolitan Police, the local health authority and the probation service admits that Hillingdon?s crime rate is generally lower than the average for London, but points out that the borough?s proportion of youth offending (26.5 per cent 1999-2000 is above the London average of 23.6 per cent. The strategy includes more use of CCTV ?for crime and disorder reduction operations?; a joint borough and probation service graffiti clearing scheme; car park security; and more use of the Crimestoppers free, confidential phone line. The strategy reports: ?The levels of various types of crime reported within the borough are no higher than the national average, with Hillingdon?s crime rate generally lower than the average for London. However, the factors that concern and affect many people?s perception of crime and safety are often bound up with the condition of the outside environment. Neglected and vandalised areas can allow a fear of crime to develop, which discourages people from venturing out with confidence. Indeed, the crime audit showed that criminal damage reports represented a significant proportion of crime when taking into account levels of under-reporting. Frequent gatherings of noisy and unruly groups can also be intimidating.?
– Hillingdon police are recruiting unpaid volunteers to free officers for front-line duties. Possible volunteer roles include: for changing videotapes in CCTV machines or undertaking some video operations, in houses of victims of harassment; front counter reception; and basic security advice to burglary victims.
