Newbury’s CCTV system is to be outsourced to the other side of Berkshire, resulting in 10 redundancies – newbury.net can reveal.
West Berkshire Council has quietly ditched a planned £250,000 digital upgrade of the town’s camera network, and instead is preparing to hand the service to Maidenhead next March, cutting nine local jobs to save £100,000 a year.
The surprise move is the latest council cutback in a tough year that has so far seen pensioner travel tokens scrapped, a hike in car parking charges backfire, and major cuts in funding conservation, trading standards, and cheap car loans for new staff.
However, newbury.net understands that the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead will monitor Newbury’s cameras during the day, while at night the cameras will merely record incidents without anyone looking at the cameras.
The town’s CCTV system was set up with funding from local businesses in 1998, and later extended to Hungerford and Thatcham. This year, the council had pledged to add cameras in Pangbourne, Theale, and Lambourn.
Crime in West Berkshire is up 0.9% in the year to October, compared to a 2.9% reduction in the Thames Valley as a whole. The biggest local crime rises have been for burglary, antisocial behaviour, and robbery.
West Berkshire has been actively exploring sharing services with the other Berkshire councils, as part of a £2.2m cost-cutting programme.
Those businesses that put their hands in their pockets back in 1998, reckon they'd have forked out if they'd been told " the monitoring will be done in Windsor. and no-one will monitor at night"?
This has to be some of the best news ever for some Wetherspoons punters.
It looks like West Berkshire Council are seeking to hide under the blanket of health and safety/commercial confidentiality when pressed on the matter, which included missing their target and running over budget to get the control room updated. Now, it seems, we will have to accept a cheaper, inferior service. Just at a time when we have had reports of daylight robberies in town.
This apparently will 'save' us £100,000 a year. I can only assume that budgets are so tight that this tiny percentage of the whole budget, is significant.
Those businesses that put their hands in their pockets back in 1998, reckon they'd have forked out if they'd been told " the monitoring will be done in Windsor. and no-one will monitor at night"?
I remember Land Securities contributing thousands of pounds to the CCTV in Newbury and the answer to your question is, of course, no. Once this service is gone, and the town centre's crime rate increases, restaurant/bars increase, police presence decreases (or stays at the same low level) etc., etc, there will be a cry for the return of normal service, then the same businesses will be asked to contribute again I suppose.
For some years now there has been a very good 'team' effort throughout the town centre. Newbury Central, Kennet Shopping security, and other retailers including Camp Hopson have worked together and made an enormous difference, often dealing with issues that are 'police work'. They have all also worked very closely with the police. Most people don't see all this 'behind the scenes' work, the observation, the tracking, * and often don't know how much difference it makes. I can see more pressure and reliance being put upon the private security that operates in the town, they all do enough already.
People remotely monitoring will not be able to track anyone, they won't recognise anyone or any place name, they will not have direct contact with the local police. Precious time will be lost. The evening recording of incidents is worrying too, let's just hope any wrong doings are carefully planned and staged to happen in front of the cameras, otherwise they are pointless.
If I may give one example, (and this is when Del worked there) I can recall a shoplifter being caught by shop staff, marched round to stand in front of a camera, (by which time the Police had been called) and a call went out from CCTV "it's ok. it's Gavin G******", and to save a bit of time, the images were stored and they went round and arrested him that evening.
All that local knowledge will be "lost like tears in the rain"
Anyone care to guess what the Officers behind the original 'Shop Safe' scheme think of this? I could tell you but the swear filter couldn't handle it. (there may have to be another Hitler parody)
This apparently will 'save' us £100,000 a year. I can only assume that budgets are so tight that this tiny percentage of the whole budget, is significant.
I guess £100k looks significant alongside a £1million overspend this year. 10% of the problem solved at a stroke.
Still we'll all sleep better knowing that a call to the police will be answered by someone in Kidlington - who can than call someone in Maidenhead to discuss the problem. But why stop there - a call centre in Delhi should save at least another £100k.
"you are in a queue, your call is important to us, please wait" *theme from 'Z Cars' plays" " sorry to keep you, all our operators are busy at the moment, please hold" *theme from Dixon of Dock Green plays" " you now have three options: If you are being robbed, please press 1, if you are being assaulted, please press 2, for raped press 3. for all other enquiries please hold to speak to the first available operator." "Thank you, you now have 4 choices, if you know the identity of your assailant press 1, if you now also require an ambulance press 2, if you would still like one of our officers to actually turn up to interview you within 48 hours (not at weekends or Bank holidays) press 3, If you're losing the will to live, and there's anyone you'd like us to fit-up for your murder, please press 4 and whisper their name. Otherwise please hold. *theme from 'The Thin Blue Line' plays * "I'm sorry, all our lines are busy at the moment, please stay on the line to speak to the next available operator....all calls may be recorded for training purposes" "theme from 'The Woodentops' plays*
Does the money for CCTV come from the Police precept of Council Tax?
The new Police Pledge says 'They [the Police] will spend at least 80% of their time visibly working in your neighbourhood, tackling your priorities'. Maybe WBC consider we dont need the cameras anymore. There will be Police on every corner.
It's well known that CCTV is a rubbish deterrent. When they set it up in town, every drop in crime was attributed to these cameras, then when crime started going up, it was quietly dropped.
Why not get rid of them altogether and use some of the savings to pay for kung fu classes?
It's well known that CCTV is a rubbish deterrent. When they set it up in town, every drop in crime was attributed to these cameras, then when crime started going up, it was quietly dropped.
Why not get rid of them altogether and use some of the savings to pay for kung fu classes?
You may be right, the savings would pay for two or three proper coppers wouldn't it.
Why is everyone slagging this off? It's well known that CCTV is a rubbish deterrent. When they set it up in town, every drop in crime was attributed to these cameras, then when crime started going up, it was quietly dropped. Why not get rid of them altogether and use some of the savings to pay for kung fu classes?
CCTV can be rubbish if implemented poorly.
It might be that when yobs become aware of the cameras, it moderated their behaviour somewhat, but then maybe it become known that they are not very good at IDing people. Yobbish behaviour therefore, goes back up. Should the cameras get upgraded to digital, perhaps it would moderate some of the behaviour again. If none of this is true, then we have to ask why we have invested so much in it. The £100,000.00 saving of course, is only that, a saving, what is the actual cost?
I understand that the Police would prefer CCTV to be available. I can think of several vicious attacks that have seen convictions, that without the footage, would have been difficult to prosecute. Mind you, I am also aware of some incidents where CCTV has been impotent.
"you are in a queue, your call is important to us, please wait" *theme from 'Z Cars' plays" " sorry to keep you, all our operators are busy at the moment, please hold" *theme from Dixon of Dock Green plays" " you now have three options: If you are being robbed, please press 1, if you are being assaulted, please press 2, for raped press 3. for all other enquiries please hold to speak to the first available operator." "Thank you, you now have 4 choices, if you know the identity of your assailant press 1, if you now also require an ambulance press 2, if you would still like one of our officers to actually turn up to interview you within 48 hours (not at weekends or Bank holidays) press 3, If you're losing the will to live, and there's anyone you'd like us to fit-up for your murder, please press 4 and whisper their name. Otherwise please hold. *theme from 'The Thin Blue Line' plays * "I'm sorry, all our lines are busy at the moment, please stay on the line to speak to the next available operator....all calls may be recorded for training purposes" "theme from 'The Woodentops' plays*
The CCTV monitoring system that we have at the moment is not only borderline obsolete but was incredibly antiquated when it was first installed. It uses a system of four (4) tapes recording all the time. Should anything untoward be captured on camera, one tape is held and sealed for reference, one goes with the arresting officer, one copy later goes to the prosecution and one then goes to the defence.
Should there be no need for the tapes, they are recorded over after a specific time. The tapes are rarely renewed which means that after constant use for, say, a year the recording quality is shot to sh*t.
There seems to be a plan here to move up to DVD technology (which is simpler and easier) but they want the local business to fork out for it again. All this seems like a scare tactic by the Council.
Interestingly, when the original group (fire, police, council, construction etc..) met to discuss the Parkway development one of the police stipulations was that four of the existing town cameras were upgraded and moved to cover the new development. It was agreed that these expenses were to be met be the developers. If I recall correctly, it was in the region of £8,000 per camera. I wonder if they'll try wriggle out of it now.
There seems to be a plan here to move up to DVD technology (which is simpler and easier) but they want the local business to fork out for it again.
I would have thought it meant a few digital recorders, they wouldn't be too expensive. Maybe businesses who didn't contribute before could club together
I would have thought it meant a few digital recorders, they wouldn't be too expensive. Maybe businesses who didn't contribute before could club together
You'd think something could be done rather than shut the whole lot down. Don't they have to change the whole system to go digital?
A couple of PVRs are a few hundred quid! A few boxes of DVDs? Digital cameras are superior in quality as well. In any case, what happened with the upgrade, was that abandoned?
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