Slough Borough Council’s recent refurbishment of its CCTV and Careline Centre has been recognised for innovation and excellence by the National CCTV User Group. Since completion in 2013 the refurbished centre has seen efficiency gains in supporting the police and councils in tackling crime and antisocial behaviour. The control room plans to stream footage to police custody suites.
Slough’s CCTV centre, like many across the country, had evolved with time. With technology ranging from ten to 20 years old, it was clear that integrating these components, and adding new non-proprietary systems, would improve its work. The council chose icomply and its V-TAS Pro platform to do the job. With the V-TAS Pro software, CCTV operatives would be able to assess which cameras were the most useful through frequent reporting. Updating systems would also mean that staff could see crimes and offenders more clearly, due to better cameras, and improve their response time and service delivery.
Peter Webster CCTV and Careline manager at Slough Borough Council said: “We wanted a purpose built control room refurbishment and technology refresh. We spent a lot of time evaluating available solutions. After a stringent performance evaluation and test the Tecton Liberator DVR and BARCO display system were the chosen recording and display solutions, with icomply responsible for holding it all together with its V-TAS Pro system. This system would instantly provide our control room with a comprehensive incident and KPI reporting package, plus the ability to integrate alarms and monitoring from the council, the wider community and the private sector.”
icomply’s Michael Gallagher said of the project: “We are proud of our association with Slough Borough Council CCTV. As well as integrating the legacy system with these new state of art solutions, our V-TAS Pro solution provides details on camera usage, incorporates an event logging system and a quick and easy way to put together ‘incident packs’. This enables the council to decommission cameras that are not paying for themselves, so that resources can be diverted to areas with the most crime.”
Director of the National CCTV User Group, Peter Fry, was impressed with how proactive the CCTV manager had been in not only improving their cost effectiveness and service, but upgrading their control centre in a revolutionary way. At the award ceremony he said: “From innovative ways of improving cost effectiveness and the service, to securing funding to upgrade the control centre, Slough is forward thinking, shedding the pedestrian ways of doing it one way because that is always how they have done it.”
For the full case study visit http://www.i-comply.co.uk/resources/case-studies.
