The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Brand new state-of-the-art CCTV coverage installed in Spalding will not initially have all capable technologies switched on.
Coun Roger Gambba-Jones said he was ‘very disappointed’ speakers allowing those monitoring the cameras to speak to people were not being installed.
Facial recognition software is among the technologies that could be used by the cameras, but the CCTV manager Andrew Haw told the Spalding Town Forum last week they will carry out the same jobs as the replaced ones though provide greater coverage to create ‘safe zones’ in popular night time areas.
Coun Gambba-Jones urged speakers be installed on the cameras so operators could warn people if they thought they were in danger.
“It seems a surprising shortcoming of this new hi-tech facility we’ve recently installed.
“I’m very disappointed and I see it as a significant shortcoming for a rural area such as us ours where we know our police force is sadly under resourced.”
Mr Haw responded that talking through speakers “was not common usage” and was “not something we’ve really considered”.
“It has been used in some areas and in a lot of cases it’s been negatively received. It adds to this ‘Big Brother’ thing.
“If there is a person stalking another person, I’d hope we’d find out who they were rather than warning them off.
“We’d rather be getting people prosecuted. I wouldn’t want to be scaring people off.”
Facial recognition software was also brought up.
“There is that technology but it’s unlikely we will use it because there’s some serious legal issues,” he said.
“The information commissioner and surveyance commissioner are very keen on it not being used willy nilly. It’s something that could be used but not for any particular reason.”
The CCTV could also pick up number plates of people driving through Market Place when it’s meant to be pedestrians only, but it won’t be used for that yet, the meeting heard.
Dee Bedford, SHDC’s community safety and enforcement manager, added: “There’s a lot of capabilities in the system but at the moment we’re keeping it to what we’re currently using it for and if we use it for anything else we have to speak to the Data Protection officer and explore further.
“We’ve replaced the cameras like for like at the moment but with greater coverage.”
Mr Haw told the meeting there had been some problems with the new system.
“Most of the cameras are installed but there’s a couple of niggling little issues we will be ironing out in the next few weeks.
“Our recording servers are not active, so we’re not using them yet and there’s things to be straightened out.”
