COUNCIL chiefs will decide whether to invest an additional £398,000 to modernise the CCTV network in Worcester city centre at a meeting next week.
Worcester City Council currently operates 66 CCTV cameras, which feed footage through a fibre optic cable network into Castle Street Police Station.
From here the information is transmitted to a control room operated by Wychavon District Council, where the images are monitored 24 hours a day.
Most of the council-owned cameras are nearly ten years old, and are analogue.
The fibre links connected to them are 15 to 20-years-old – and the City Council has already started work to upgrade them to carry digital images.
And speaking ahead of Tuesday’s (December 11) meeting of the Policy and Resources Committee, council leader Coun Marc Bayliss emphasised the importance of the system to the city.
“We recognise the important role that CCTV plays in crime prevention; investment is needed now to ensure that the city has an effective, well-resourced and fully functional network underpinned by up-to-date technology,” he said.
“It is important to recognise that the Council-owned network of cameras is just one of many sources of CCTV footage available to police. Several businesses, organisations and residents also operate cameras within the city centre.”
In addition to the additional investment being considered by Worcester City Council, a further £50,000 has been allocated by the Police and Crime Commissioner to improve the city’s CCTV network.
Council officers are also in discussion with the University of Worcester regarding the University gaining future access to specific CCTV camera footage from its control room.
