Case Studies

Lancashire control room

by Mark Rowe

OpenView Security Solutions (OSS) reports completion of a new control room in Blackburn. The company was awarded the contract after an open tender process as part of the Lancashire Hub CCTV Centralisation Project. Its aim; to consolidate local government facilities across the county into a single control room; to reduce costs and improve service delivery against community safety objectives.

The new control room, which cost almost £1m, is in King George’s Hall, Blackburn where seven operators and two supervisors monitor over 240 cameras across East Lancashire around the clock. It features a video wall that comprises 33 x 42-inch screens, one of the UK’s largest councils installations.

An official opening earlier this year was attended by Assistant Chief Constable Mark Bates and Blackburn with Darwen Council leader Mohammed Khan, pictured right, who said: “This impressive facility will not only save the participating authorities money on their previous CCTV costs, but it will also lead to more prosecutions and a reduction in crime and anti-social behaviour. We are hoping that more authorities throughout Lancashire will join this innovative initiative.”

Funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government via its Transformation Challenge Award with money from Lancashire Constabulary’s Police and Crime Commissioner, a first phase was to consolidate legacy systems and control rooms in Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley and Preston. That improves the ability to share data with Lancashire Police on a real-time basis for response to incidents, OSS report.

OSS did site surveys, including lines of sight, before recommending a wireless Ethernet network that would allow the majority of locations to be migrated to the latest Hikvision HD IP cameras wherever possible. This new wireless infrastructure links to the wide area network and was completed before installing the latest video management and storage platform into the East Lancashire data centre. A Hikvision control room system was then installed before migrating Blackburn with Darwen’s CCTV system into the new room, ensuring that no loss of service during the process. OSS then migrated the remaining systems on a staged basis.

Peter Wareing, CCTV Services Manager for Blackburn with Darwen Council, said: “We have been impressed by the high quality of advice and technical ability provided by OpenView Security Solutions throughout this strategic project. We now have an efficient and cost effective CCTV solution that will deliver significant savings for all participating local authorities through the optimisation of staff resources, elimination of telephony circuit rental costs and reduction of ongoing maintenance costs. The system also provides a platform for improved income generation to help achieve our objective of making public space CCTV a self-financing proposition.”

Andy Ward, Sales Director of OpenView Security Solutions, said: “We are delighted to have played such a big role in the successful delivery of this project that transmits real-time HD images back to the control room at a much lower cost than the previous analogue-based systems. It also shows how councils can work effectively together to provide a higher level of service and improve safety in public spaces.” Visit www.openviewgroup.com.

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