The Council’s CCTV System is an important facility, delivering the crime and disorder reduction objectives of the Council’s Safer Walsall Partnership and the operational needs of the Police, as well as supporting retail and pub watch crime reduction initiatives.
The main objectives of the Walsall Public Space CCTV service were:
• To help reduce the fear of crime
• To help prevent and detect crime and provide evidential material for court proceedings
• To assist in the overall management of the borough, including major events and regular activities in the town centre
• To deter and detect acts of anti-social behaviour including alcohol and drug related elements
• To enhance community safety, assist in developing the economic well-being of the borough and encourage greater use of the town centres
The challenge that faced Walsall Council was to determine whether to invest in their current CCTV surveillance system, which operated in designated public spaces across the borough by upgrading the existing system to enhance the effectiveness of the operation. Alternatively, consider outsourcing elements of the existing provision to generate cost efficiency or adopt a shared services approach with other neighbouring local authorities.
Walsall is a busy industrial town in the West Midlands with a compressive CCTV network that includes some other smaller towns local to the area. SGW have been engaged to conduct a dilapidation and feasibility study of a CCTV system that was installed in the 1990s during the ‘CCTV boom’, and has in some aspects reached the end of its use-able life. Working with the concept of a safer Walsall, SGW considered the merits of a range of options from discontinuing the monitoring of CCTV, invest to save projects, sub-contracting the work out to other public space CCTV agencies, or third party financial support.
