The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Images from South Holland District Council’s CCTV system contributed to 49 arrests being made in a year, though it failed to lead to a conviction after a man in his 70s was spat at.
The system was used to support 65 packages of evidence between April 2019 and March this year.
Operators were also able to alert police about an attempted ram raid in progress in Crowland in May.
The system, which costs £30,000 per year to monitor and maintain, comprises 15 cameras in Spalding, four in Holbeach and three in Crowland.
The most recent information about the system’s effectiveness emerged following criticism of the quality of an image captured by one of the Spalding cameras.
It was used to accompany a police appeal to trace a person they wanted to speak to in connection with an alleged assault in Spalding on April 14 this year. An elderly man using a cashpoint at NatWest in Market Place was said to have been spat upon by a man after brief words between the two.
The district council said this week: “The image quality looks low since the image has been zoomed in and cropped. The actual full video image is 1280x720p, and the image of this person is only a small part of the frame.
“This image shows the benefit of HD CCTV in that evidential images can be gained even when the camera is recording a wider view of the area.”
The man in the image was never traced and Lincolnshire Police said this week: “No arrests were made on this one and we are not actively issuing any more appeals.”
The parish councils of Holbeach and Crowland do not pay towards the operation of the CCTV system. Spalding does not have a council but its equivalent of a parish precept is Spalding Special Expenses, which does make a financial contribution to community safety.
The district council said: “We did intend to review contributions to fees and charges this financial year, but this piece of work is on hold.”
