Feedback on plans to review the provision of CCTV cameras across County Durham will be discussed by councillors next week.
Durham County Council is reviewing where cameras are sited and how they are monitored in order to create an improved, better value and more effective service.
As part of this process, which includes all equipment monitored 24-hours a day, the authority is proposing to create a single control room and remove a number of cameras that do not provide operational value.
Members of the council’s Cabinet will be told when they meet on Wednesday, 11 July, that a list of cameras the authority is proposing to decommission has now been compiled.
It shows those cameras that, according to Home Office guidance, are not cost effective because they do not have a significant impact on reducing anti-social behaviour and crime or providing public reassurance.
Members of the public, local councillors, AAPs and partner organisations were given the opportunity to comment on and influence the list during a public consultation at the end of last year.
The current owners or providers of the cameras will be given the opportunity to pay for the council to continue monitoring them or operate to take over monitoring themselves otherwise they will be decommissioned.
Strategic cameras will continue to be monitored and maintained by the council and more redeployable cameras will be made available for use in problem areas.
Cllr Lucy Hovvels, Durham County Council’s Cabinet member for safer and healthier communities, said: “This review will enable us to provide a better value, more effective CCTV monitoring system.
“While we will continue to monitor operationally important cameras, such as those in town centres and public space, these changes will give us access to an increased number of redeployable cameras that we can use to better target areas of high crime and anti-social behaviour.”
A tendering exercise is due to begin this month for a company to take on the maintenance of equipment across the county and refurbish the control room at Chilton so that it can be used as the central monitoring hub.
This would bring together operations that are currently based at three separate locations.
The number of control rooms has already been reduced from five following the Local Government Review in 2009.
The changes should enable the council to save an estimated £330,000.
The contract should be awarded at the beginning of October.
