Council to stop funding CCTV equipment in Berwick

The recommendations, which were approved by the full council on Monday, also include that “the existing equipment should be disposed of unless a suitable partner wishes to take on the costs of its maintenance”.

The local authority has funded the provision of CCTV in the town centre since 2015. It is a substantial item of spending each year.

It has previously mentioned that the cameras are linked to the police station, where there is a bank of screens and some video recorders.

Following some concerns over the efficiency of the system, council officers were asked to carry out a review. This included a consultation with the general public.

Ahead of the recommendations going to the communities and local services committee and then onto the full council, a section in this month’s town council newsletter discussed some of the reasons why CCTV was being reviewed.

It included the following: “If you were designing a framework for connecting shops and businesses in 2023, would you use radios, or WhatsApp? Would you have a bank of screens in a darkened room in the police station, or a 5g feed of camera images to a mobile phone?

“Given how much the framework our CCTV operates in has changed, we need to ask ourselves some more questions.”

The other recommendations include that the council should promote the benefits of wider partnership working in the town (to address any new threats from retail theft).