In north London, Barnet Council’s Cabinet Resources Committee has approved plans for a new CCTV system in the borough. A new contract will place CCTV services with OCS Group UK Ltd and will see the control room co-located with Enfield Council.
The contract will see the CCTV upgraded including monitoring, recording, reviewing and transmission equipment. The borough adds that the new equipment will also include the ability to automatically read number plates on routes across the borough. The upfront spending is the council says financially prudent as over five years the contract will save Barnet £747,000.
David Longstaff, Barnet Council Cabinet Member for Community Safety, said: “This is a step change in our CCTV service with a far higher quality of equipment than we have had before. The state-of-the-art equipment to be installed will assist the police in detecting crime and will provide much higher quality evidence to secure convictions.
“The new equipment will be both cheaper to run and far more flexible, allowing us to shift cameras to target crime hotspots. I am particularly pleased that we will be able to introduce Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) which will allow the police to track vehicles in real time, providing them with the intelligence to link and solve crimes including burglary.”
