Council leaves CCTV system to crumble as budget costs bite

Scottish Borders Council is to turn its back on its crumbling security network rather than spending the hundreds of thousands of pounds it would cost to bring it up to date.

Councillors voted 15-14 at Thursday night’s meeting in favour of continuing to spend £44,000 a year on minimal maintenance of the region’s 70 cameras until they are broken beyond repair and finally removed.

Council leader Shona Haslam told the committee she believed the system’s maintenance or replacement was not the job of the council.

“This would be money that is not going to be spent on our roads, social care and education, and on the most vulnerable in our community,” she said. “Due to the budget restraint we have, I cannot see a way forward. We can’t do it on our own, Police Scotland needs to talk to us.

“Our police are unable to commit any funding to the project, nor are they able to provide any information on the effect CCTV has on them detecting crime.

“It’s police that use and access the footage. The council should have no role in this whatsoever.”

The stance has caused an outcry amongst councillors, who pointed towards a public consultation showing more than 90 per cent of respondents said they agreed the network should be maintained. Galashiels councillor Harry Scott said: “The health, safety and wellbeing of the population it serves are the prime responsibilities of any local authority, and that includes the prevention and detection of crime.”

The authority pays for the upkeep of 70 public-space CCTV cameras in Hawick, Galashiels, Kelso, Peebles, Eyemouth, Selkirk, Melrose and Duns monitored by the police, though 22 of them are out of order.

Former police chief and Hawick and Hermitage councillor Watson Mcateer said the proposals set before the committee were “quite honestly insulting” to the people and police officers of the Borders.

Hesaid:“wehaveheardfrom council officers that the police don’t use CCTV very often, but is it little wonder? This council produced a report last year that indicated almost 70 per cent of systems were not operating correctly with nearly 50 per cent hardly working at all. Is it little wonder the police are less than enthusiastic?”

With one-in-four of the cameras around Borders town centres not working and many more expected to go offline in the next couple of years, Tweeddale East councillor Stuart Bell suggested an alternative to the officers’ recommendations yesterday.

“We are spending about £40,000 per annum on maintaining the current dilapidated system,” he said.

“This report says we have to spend about the same again to maintain a decent system. The other option is costs of up to £150,000 just to dismantle what we’ve got.

“The net capital cost of what I am proposing in this amendment would be £600,000 to £650,000 to get eight decent systems. That could and should be phased over a number of years.”

A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “CCTV is an important tool for officers in terms of both crime prevention and detection. We continue to work with our communities, elected representatives and the council regarding the provision of CCTV in our towns, and this includes their maintenance, as well as any opportunities to improve the current provisions.”

“Due to the budget restraint we have, I cannot see a way forward. We can’t do it on our own, Police Scotland needs to talk to us”

SHONA HASLAM