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14
Oct
North Yorkshire CCTV ‘patchy’ and in need of review, says deputy mayor
CCTV across North Yorkshire is “patchy” and should be optimised to help public safety, says the deputy mayor for policing.
Jo Coles, deputy mayor for policing and crime in York and North Yorkshire, told a North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Panel this week that a review of the camera systems was one area she had been looking at as part of her role.
Currently, CCTV systems are run by North Yorkshire Council in control rooms across the county.
The council charges North Yorkshire Police for access to the cameras for footage which is used for appeals and prosecutions.
However, at a meeting on Thursday, Ms Coles suggested that the system could be optimised to help police.
She said:
I think there is a strategic challenge here across the former boroughs of North Yorkshire. There are a whole series of slightly different CCTV arrangements in different places.
Ms Coles pointed out that the control room in York is shared with police in a “mirrored access” arrangement.
However, other control rooms such as Harrogate and Scarborough, which are council-run, require police to ask for footage.
Ms Coles suggested CCTV could work better under one system which could be used to monitor live incidents or refer back to in order to help prosecutions. She said:
We have got a situation where there is patchy access to some of that CCTV in live terms. At the moment, we don’t have one system that operates in terms of either how the CCTV operates on the ground or how it is shared with police in live monitoring or how you track back [to find an incident].
Ms Coles said she had raised the matter over CCTV with Tim Forber, chief constable at North Yorkshire Police, and would be looking at it in future.
CCTV under review
Meanwhile, during the meeting, Cllr David Chance, who was formerly executive councillor for corporate services on North Yorkshire Council, which included oversight of CCTV, said the system was currently under review.
He said:
North Yorkshire CCTV is currently under review with a view to consolidating it all in one control room.
Cllr Chase added that he suspected that the control room where the CCTV would be based would be in Scarborough.
He told the panel:
I don’t know where the control room is. I suspect it will be Scarborough because they can find operators there easier than they can in Harrogate.
They will also be rationalising the hours as well. There are four different systems at the moment and they all operate on different hours, whereas Scarborough operates 24 hours a day.
When asked for more details on the review, Cllr Heather Phillips, executive member for corporate services at the council, said:
We are constantly looking at how we can improve our services so we can best serve our residents.
As a result of local government reorganisation, we, alongside our partners at North Yorkshire Police, are reviewing public open space CCTV provision across North Yorkshire.
We are currently in the very early stages of this work and so are unable to give any further details at this stage.
We are conscious of the vital role these public open space cameras play, providing a sense of reassurance, and whatever decisions are taken with regard to future delivery will be done with the wellbeing of our communities in mind.
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