West Norfolk CCTV: Special report
A NEW £150,000 investment into the West Norfolk CCTV network has ensured the cameras are now recording the best quality images ever and operators have better tools at their disposal to view them.
The watchful eye of CCTV is now a part of everyday life, yet it is something most people never think about.
Some statistics suggest every one of us is caught on camera up to 300 times per day and, thanks to a growing CCTV network in Lynn and West Norfolk, there are plenty of opportunities here, as our images show.
West Norfolk councillor for community David Harwood said: "Obviously from the point of view of the people of West Norfolk it has to be a good thing, offering protection to themselves and their property and the town centre and shops benefit from it as well.
"The figures show it is very beneficial in actually catching people from a crime point of view and it has proved itself over the years."
Lynn was a pioneer for CCTV when West Norfolk Council's public system got off the ground in 1992 and 15 years on it is still developing.
New investment, totalling 146,500, has allowed the conversion of the control room monitors to 19 and 40-inch flatscreens and brought the hardware into the digital age, vastly speeding up the process of retrieving images and recording at a speed of 12.5 instead of 1.5 frames per second, to give a much smoother view.
CCTV operations manager Karl Weeks said: "We can now instantly put any of the cameras up on those big screens and this allows us to be more proactive and reactive by seeing what is going on in large scale."
In the beginning there were 46 cameras linked to the West Norfolk Council King Street control room. That figure has now multiplied three-and-a-half times to include 167 cameras covering Lynn town centre, its car parks, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Lynnsport, Fairstead, Hillington Square and the St Edmundsbury estates and Hardwick and North Lynn industrial estates. A set of cameras is also now in place in Hunstanton and Downham may soon be covered too.
And a new radio system, which links shops, businesses and pubs straight to the control room, has just been brought in-house.
There is a unique philosophy in West Norfolk of striving to ensure the cameras are funded by the businesses and facilities they serve, which has proved controversial at times, especially after decisions to switch off selected industrial estate cameras when fees stopped coming in. Those cameras are now being moved to Oak Circle, Gaywood, and The Walks and Bagge Road, in Gaywood, which will join the others in receiving the 24-hour attention of the control room, manned in shifts by a team of ten staff.
The cameras not only log evidence, but are also used to guide police into trouble spots as it is happening, to help ensure big events such as the Great East Anglia Run and Festival Too run smoothly and to find missing people – including vulnerable patients who have walked out of hospital and children separated from their parents.
The system cost 511,000 to run last year, monitored some 1,267 incidents and assisted with 655 arrests. Incidents it became involved in included an abduction, 113 assaults, two suspected bombs, 35 missing people and six occasions of tracking known sex offenders.
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Weather for King's Lynn
Sunday 27 May 2012
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