From the November print issue of Professional Security magazine.
Babergh District Council commissioned a review by consultant John Bishop of the Suffolk local authority’s CCTV in Sudbury and Hadleigh town centres. Some 53 recommendations resulted.
The report describes the CCTV systems in Sudbury and Hadleigh as a ‘solid investment for the future’, while identifying some areas where the town systems could be better managed. John Bishop said: “The evaluation was primarily geared to identifying the reasons for public criticism of the systems. My recommendations are aimed at directly increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the current systems, enabling operational capabilities to meet, and possibly even exceed, public expectations.”
The report found the installation in 1996 led, initially, to a dramatic decrease in crime, with crime figures steadily rising again in later years – though not to pre-1994 levels. This has led in turn to an increase of public criticism of the cameras and their capabilities. Monitoring is by Ipswich Council’s CCTV monitoring centre – 20 miles from Sudbury. The report’s commissioners agreed with concerns aired in the report that ‘successes’ resulting from monitoring had to be better publicised. In other words, it was not so much the equipment, but the human communication between police, the Ipswich opertors, and the Babergh taxpayers; if they sought more proactive monitoring, were their expectations beyond the public services of a rural county?
A recent Transport for London poster campaign at bus stops said four out of five buses have CCTV. Cameras in other words still have official and public confidence as a tool for public safety. Tesco, to name one retailer, has a console with flat-screens for CCTV monitoring at some stores’ entrance, for what you could call overt-covert surveillance by uniformed staff. CCTV use is developing, as technology develops and indeed criminals’ reaction to the technology. How then to get the best out of your spend on CCTV? Public and private users are finding money on evaluation well spent.
CCTV consultant Derek Maltby spoke with Mark Rowe at a recent Dallmeier electronic open day near Bristol.
First we pored over Prof Joshua Bamfield’s article on powers of arrest in the September issue of Professional Security. Derek has been among those calling for years for clarity over the rights of a security officer to detain someone, if a mall CCTV operator, say, radios to the officer that a suspect has done a crime. After serving with Avon and Somerset Police Derek was the security and services manager at the Galleries shopping centre in central Bristol. He was the SITO-trained Training Manager for manned guarding firm Empire Security in Bristol and was an inaugural member of the CCTV User Group Standards Committee in 1997. As Derek recalled from his shopping centre days, youths can be a problem gathering in a mall, just because it is dry and warm. Derek taught his security guards to arrest for a breach of the peace, he recalled – indeed, some police officers did not know their powers! As a sign of how UK expertise in CCTV is a good export, Derek made in 2006 a third visit to Barbados making a CCTV feasibility study ahead of the 2007 Cricket World Cup. He has carried out feasibility studies for UK local authorities. Public space CCTV, having begun with Home Office grants for capital costs, has in places tended to grow without direction. Hence a study can set out what a council has for what it pays, and what it can invest to get various possible outcomes. To generate revenue and better afford a CCTV service, some councils are looking to monitor lone workers, and public buildings such as schools and health centres. These were the subjects of a seminar run by Derek’s consultancy MSC, in Swindon in February.
Transmission
The ways of transmitting CCTV images are changing, and that is where the cost is, as Derek noted. The quality of ADSL has become a lot better, he reported. Why spend thousands of pounds a year for BT to transmit high quality CCTV images, if most are thrown away once they come to the control room? What quality of image does an operator need? Broadcast quality? or does an operator only need a flavour of what is happening? Software in a camera can allow a CCTV user to analyse when the times of peak incidents are. The user can then make the case for employing security staff at the peaks, and fewer staff at the troughs. One man may in fact produce more work than two, if the two talk to each other.
Salisbury District Council CCTV operators had public recognition for assisting the police during a two-month operation investigating the supply of drugs in the area.
The operators, from contractors Reliance Security Services, gained the Managing Director’s Award in the contract firm’s own national award scheme. And in a letter of thanks the police said, "They are a credit to Salisbury District Council and to their employer, Reliance Security, in the way they conducted themselves during this sensitive operation … CCTV operators played a crucial role in the gathering of visual evidence throughout this case." A local man was arrested and charged with serious drug offences. The council’s CCTV Manager, Mike Withers, said: "Once again our CCTV system has shown how effective it is and what can be achieved by close, practical working partnerships. This was a period of intense commitment by all of the operators and they thoroughly deserve the award."
In short, CCTV plays a role in preventing crime and anti-social behaviour in the cathedral city. But how to prove it? CCTV control rooms are a service like rubbish collection. Hence the council has scrutiny panels whose reports are downloadable, covering so far school transport, sheltered housing; and, from the planning and economic development overview and scrutiny panel, ‘The future of CCTV in south Wiltshire’.
This is not to say that Salisbury’s CCTV is lacking – quite the opposite; Mike Withers chairs the CCTV Users Group standards board, and the February 2001 issue of Professional Security featured the chaperone service offered, whereby lone workers could be ‘escorted’ by CCTV from their workplace to car park. And as the report notes, the council CCTV gained a BSIA award in 2004. The councillors (who also had a report by CCTV consultant Derek Maltby to go on) did conclude that the system gives good value for money and that its management is of high quality.
The 40-page document set out its stall, pointing out that some £600,000 a year went on CCTV in the county. Much of the equipment was ten years old. Were the public, police and businesses getting a good deal? How effective was the service? Should the council be the provider? Should CCTV even continue?
Surveys suggested if anything people wanted CCTV elsewhere, maybe into large villages (not by fixed cameras, but more cost-effectively by vans?). Interviewed besides Mike Withers and Reliance contracts manager Simon Moore were police, other council staff, and the city’s pub watch chairman Bill Buchan. Scrutinising councillors visited Westminster council CCTV and talked to CCTV manager Daniel Brown. Briefly, the Salisbury system began with 70 cameras in 1995 and by 2005 had 118. Police at county HQ in Devizes can view images; operators have radio links with the Salisbury council’s ‘Parking Ambassadors’, and businesses in the Salisbury City Watch and pub watch schemes. Car parks have help-points for drivers to speak to CCTV operators. In passing, the report suggested that dummy cameras are a waste of resources; and CCTV may displace crime. Statistics to measure CCTV may be lacking – for instance, what is the saving to the criminal justice system from criminals who regularly admit offences when presented with CCTV evidence? And as the report said: “The community benefit provided by the service is immeasurable.”
The report did conclude that CCTV should continue. But how? Should it extend to traffic monitoring (and help issue fixed penalty tickets for violations)? And where should the control room be, given that the overall council is looking to centralise in the city centre? The report went through its options, including re-locating to a shopping mall.
CCTV equipment would soon need upgrading (to digital? as the analogue recording, the report says, is ‘obsolete’), and the maintenance contract ends in 2008. The report wondered: could digital images from CCTV cameras be
transmitted over wireless connections to a nearby receiver and then through existing IP or broadband internet connections to the control room where they can be stored digitally rather than on VHS tape? “This removes the need for dedicated physical cables which accrues savings both in terms of the expense of laying miles of cable and the expense of leasing cable lines from BT.” The council pays BT £43,000 a year for fibre optic cabling. Should Salisbury copy Westminster City Council and go wireless, and save thousands on line rentals? And use a LAN or WAN to send images to police at Devizes, 26 miles away? (But the council would expect the police to pay.) Like many local authority documents, this one offered not answers but feasibility studies. In fairness, the document did thrash out the issues. At the park and ride sites, for instance: do real time CCTV images have to go to the control centre? Or, can the council save on staff at park and ride (‘ambassadors’) at off-peak by relying on remote monitoring? At a car park with 20 cameras, the report proposed fewer domes instead, and installing more ‘Metal Mickeys’ from Forward Vision, as used elsewhere in city car parks. And rather than paying a private security firm for alarm response to council-owned buildings in the city centre, the council’s CCTV control room should do it.
The councillors were aware of Prof Martin Gill’s national evaluation of CCTV, published in 2005. And the report looked into Wiltshire having only a couple of CCTV public space monitoring ‘hubs’ – Salisbury maybe monitoring even Chippenham’s 13 town centre cameras, 35 miles away? Mike Withers told the review group that he had given a quote to a private company asking if the council could provide a monitoring service. The reviewers agreed with such revenue.
