Brigg Blog is still awaiting official confirmation from North Lincolnshire Council, but it's being suggested they are considering removal of some trees in the Market Place to give the CCTV cameras an unobstructed view of crimes taking place in the town centre during the warmer months when the trees are in leaf.
This course of action has been suggested for several years but North Lincolnshire Council has to weigh up the potential crime-fighting benefits against the loss of greenery installed as part of the pedestrianisation scheme that came into being in the mid-1990s.
The possibility of trees being axed - and replaced with smaller ones - received a brief mention at a Brigg Town Council committee meeting in the Angel Suite on Wednesday.
Coun Mike Campion suggested there would be "outcry" in some quarters if the trees were removed altogether.
Someone we were talking to last night in Brigg, who's strongly against cutting down the current trees, posed the interesting question: "Why can't they just move the cameras?"
If/when North Lincolnshire Council comes back to us with a reply, we'll let you know in a future post on Brigg Blog.
There are already plans to revise the layout of stalls in the Market Place and the trees may well form part this.
READ MORE BRIGG NEWS HERE
www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/Brigg
1 comment:
The proposal seems a rather extreme measure to improve CCTV's panning coverage.
The CCTV system's efficiency has always been in question - it never seems to catch anything of significance, although, I suggest, that its proficiency is more related to the quality level of monitoring exercised at the Control Centre in Scunthorpe, than to the CCTV equipment itself.
Unless the enduring monitoring problem is radically improved, any amount of relocation fiddling; installing state-of-the-art, remotely controlled cameras, combined with official promises, the Brigg's CCTV system will remain an ever-increasingly expensive white elephant.
In practical terms, it has been regularly said the view of the existing CCTV camera on the bookies in Market Place is redistricted by the foliage of the trees outside the Woolpack.
However, it has also been frequently indicated that its location is dependent upon the routing of power and recording cabling.
The new equipment is remotely controlled, which increases the potential number of alternative locations, albeit that whatever sites are chosen should optimise CCTV coverage.
Anyway, I await in anticipation and ponder whether, after an incident, one will still receive such official comments as, 'the camera was switched off'; 'nothing recorded on the camera'; the system has been unserviceable for several weeks'; 'A recording disc wasn't loaded in the machine'; 'the camera was not in focus', 'the camera was facing the other way (facing the wall!)'.......
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