Agenda and minutes

There were no declarations of interest.

RESOLVED

that the minutes of the meeting of the Panel held on 16^th January, 2018 be received and approved as a correct record.

(Councillor Lauren Mitchell entered the meeting at 6.33 p.m. during consideration of the above item.)

The Chairman reminded the Panel that this topic was added to the Scrutiny Workplan to enable Members to gain an understanding of Ashfield’s current CCTV operations around the District. 

The Panel had held an introductory meeting on this topic in October, 2017 to agree and discuss the terms of reference for the review.  At that meeting Members expressed an interest in attending a site visit to view the new shared CCTV Control Room located at the Police Headquarters, Sherwood Lodge to see how the system operates on a day to day basis. Unfortunately, due to some technical issues, there had been a delay in launching the new control room and this had affected any site visits to the venue.

The Chairman was therefore pleased to report that the visit to view the new control room had taken place on the previous day and was attended by a number of Members and Officers.  She informed the Panel that the site visit was extremely interesting and informative and enabled those participating in the visit to obtain an insight into how the cameras are used, how it is monitored and the quality of the system.

The Chairman briefly described the layout of the control room which contained a large number of flat screen monitors along one wall and various desk monitors.  The control room operatives demonstrated to the group how the cameras can zoom in to face level as and when required whilst retaining exceptional image quality.

The group were able to ask questions of the control room operatives and Mike Manley, Emergency Planning and CCTV Officer from Newark and Sherwood District Council was also on hand to take questions regarding the system and discuss how things were moving forward.

The Chairman then welcomed to the meeting Rebecca Whitehead, Community Protection Manager and Chris Parkes, Community Protection Team Leader who were in attendance to give an overview of how the Council is currently using CCTV, the location of the cameras and scope for any improvements.

The Community Protection Manager informed the Panel that the CCTV provision in Ashfield was part of a collaborative arrangement with Newark and Sherwood District Council and Broxtowe Borough Council with the control room relocating from Kelham Hall to the Police Headquarters at Sherwood Lodge. 

The Panel were advised that the monitor wall in the new control room was made up of 12 monitors and at any time 26 Ashfield cameras (out of a total of 160 cameras) were permanently displayed equating to 24% of the overall display.  The cameras were monitored 24 hours each and every day and in addition the control room staff provide a 24 hour contact centre for some of the Council’s out-of-hours services.

As part of the collaborative arrangement Ashfield District Council have 29 wireless CCTV cameras across the 3 town centres and other key locations (parks and car parks).  In addition, there are 2 rapid deployable cameras that can be moved to hot spot locations as necessary.

The Community Protection Manager reported that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16.