A council CCTV manager has branded BT Redcare price rises as ‘unacceptable’.
This comes after Openreach (another part of BT) published revised wholesale rates for services to 2010. James Hennah, commercial director at BT Redcare, said: “Whilst any increases in costs are never welcome, especially in the current economic climate, we are pleased that Openreach has listened to our and our customers’ concerns over the long-term viability of CCTV schemes. These schemes have a dramatic impact in reducing crime and disorder and play a major part in ensuring public safety, especially in the heightened state of alertness that we currently find ourselves. We have worked with customers, not only to provide reassurance and practical solutions to the challenges of budgeting for CCTV schemes, but together we have lobbied Openreach and Ofcom to ensure the future viability of schemes. We will continue our dialogue to provide further reassurance and develop new contracting arrangements and technologies that will ensure a prosperous and safe future for all stakeholders.” BT Redcare in mid-January gave what it called a further guarantee on retail pricing – price rises for existing services to its customers in April 2010 will be a maximum of 10 per cent. Redcare also said that there will be an increase of ‘only’ five per cent in the cost of existing circuits from April 2009.
Martin Lazell, who chairs the PCMA (Public CCTV Managers Association) told Professional Security: “Contracts with BT have always allowed for annual increases, so the service was clearly profitable and BT had clearly made the decision not to make those increases. With [telecoms regulator] Ofcom telling us that it has no power to regulate pricing in this sector, it’s both baffling and astonishing that they have permitted (and without any consultation with local authority customers of BT fibres) the changes in BT which have created Redcare and Openreach as basically separate entities, apparently in the name of competition.” He complained of a series of above inflation increases that Ofcom is unwilling or unable to control. “There is no doubt that this will have a very serious effect on local authority CCTV operations and their ability to contribute to crime and disorder partnership work. Local authority CCTV budgets will simply not stand for these levels of increase without seriously affecting their ability to maintain standards of operation. Ofcom has some explaining to do, because no one has, as yet, given us any explanation of why prices are being increased so excessively.”
