CRIMINALS could soon find there’s nowhere to hide in South Holland’s town centres if plans go ahead to monitor CCTV cameras 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
At the moment cameras feed footage to a control room at Spalding Police Station which is manned by volunteers.
However, South Holland District Council is in the process of looking at ways to improve the service by having round-the-clock surveillance not dependent on volunteers.
Options include joining forces with neighbouring councils such as Boston Borough to provide a 24-hour monitoring centre or buying in the service from a private company.
In both cases it is possible the CCTV cameras in the district’s town centres including Spalding, Long Sutton and Holbeach could be upgraded to ones that rotate and are able to follow moving targets, which could mean fewer are needed to cover a wider area.
Coun Nick Worth, who is working on the project, said: “We have had a company from Derbyshire give us a quote for CCTV cameras that can be monitored 24/7 as opposed to now where they are monitored by volunteers.
“I went a couple of months ago and looked at one of their monitoring facilities in Thetford. Because it’s web-based they can monitor the cameras from anywhere in the country, or from a laptop computer, but they have told us that our current cameras are not good enough so now we are getting other quotes.
“This could involve with working with neighbouring authorities such as Boston, which has already said it is keen to work with others to help save costs.”
Coun Worth said he is now working on putting his findings in a report which will be presented to South Holland District Council’s cabinet within the next couple of months.
In the meantime Boston Borough Council is looking at changing its CCTV service to help slash £70,000 from its budget.
The council will discuss whether it can take on the monitoring of two other districts’ cameras for a fee, or pay to have its 72 cameras monitored elsewhere.