St Helens Borough Council has agreed to spend about £701,000 as part of its Medium-Term Financial Strategy for a new CCTV suite and surveillance cameras.
Councillor Mancyia Uddin, the council’s Cabinet Member for Community Safety, said: “CCTV is a core component of the community safety infrastructure in our borough, acting as a reassurance for local communities and reducing the fear of crime through ongoing monitoring and response to criminal activities.
“Judging by the response from our Community Safety Survey last year, the majority of residents remain in favour of this provision, with 70 percent of respondents agreeing that CCTV reduces crime, 87 percent agreeing that it should be used to reduce, deter, and detect crime and 73 percent agreed that CCTV makes them feel safer.
“As a council, along with our community safety partners, we have a duty to protect residents and visitors to our borough and so this investment will have a positive benefit in reassurance for local communities and reducing the fear of crime as we look to create a safer St Helens for all.”
As with other councils whose systems date from the analogue era of the 1990s and 2000s, a report to cabinet by Tanya Wilcock, Director of Communities, spoke of the system being now ‘significantly outdated’ and CCTV cameras across the borough needing to be replaced due to ‘a risk of service failure’.
As in other councils, a renewal of the public space video surveillance can tie in with more general changes. The report said that the CCTV control room in Wesley House, as part of a wider ‘Asset Strategy’ has a planned closure date in 2023, ‘and therefore this presents an opportunity to complete the upgrade of the system whilst relocating to another site within the council estate’.
Phase one will be the CCTV suite and phase two the upgrade of the cameras, by one contractor, the report proposed. As elsewhere, besides CCTV for community safety reasons, ‘to prevent crime and disorder’, the report spoke of CCTV as ‘a core element of the overall asset base of the Council estate, and the provision supports the protection of our buildings and localities’.
Manchester op
For a second year, police are running Operation Lioness across Greater Manchester. The op was piloted in Tameside then rolled out in the summer of 2022, to tackle Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) in the night-time economy. Detective Superintendent James Faulkner, Greater Manchester Police’s Tactical Lead for VAWG, described how police – overt and covert – will patrol licensed premises and high streets, besides transport links such as the trams (pictured, St Peter’s Square tram stop) and buses. “We will also have staff in our control rooms monitoring CCTV in hotspot areas so patrols can be sent directly to any suspicious or dangerous situations which may be unfolding,” she said. Similarly, the June print edition of Professional Security Magazine featured work by Thames Valley Police in Oxford, working with the council’s control room against predators against women on nights out.
And Hampshire
In Hampshire meanwhile, Havant Borough Council is having 15 new CCTV cameras fitted in Waterlooville town centre, in a spend of of £25,400.
Councillor Gwen Robinson, Deputy Leader of the Council, Cabinet Lead for Communities and Housing, said “The council’s CCTV network in Waterlooville and the town centre should deliver significant improvements in crime reduction. CCTV is about prevention, deterrence and detection of crime, ranging from vandalism, shoplifting and anti-social behaviour to help provide a safer environment for the general public and reducing the fear of crime.
