Last updated 12:10, Friday, 10 October 2008

A NEW state of the art CCTV system could be installed in Ulverston by April.

By David Pickthall

SLDC will meet with Ulverston CCTV User Group on Wednesday to decide whether to:

lStick with the status quo and continue to pay Barrow police to monitor CCTV footage at their Market Street station

lOr part with the police and lease a brand new CCTV system that can be renewed every five years to keep up with moving technology.

SLDC currently provides CCTV in Ulverston at a cost of £30,000 a year.

Sticking with Barrow police would only free up enough money to gradually repair the current cameras in Ulverston as and when needed.

Ending the partnership would allow a complete replacement of the existing cameras with new state of the art ones rented from a CCTV company.

Scott Burns, SLDC Culture and Economy manager, said: “The current cameras were installed in the late 1990s, but like a car or a piece of computer equipment, they’re coming to the end of their shelf life.

“The cameras are still fully operational but we’re thinking about how to improve and replace the system.

“The key point would be finding where to locate a monitoring point in Ulverston and relocating the fibre optics. Possible locations could be the police station, but I don’t know if they would like that, or The Coronation Hall, but there’s not a lot of space there.”

The importance of improving CCTV surveillance in Ulverston was raised in February by Brogden Street shopkeeper Alan Hunter, of Rossendale Interiors.

Mr Hunter revealed shop owners feared for their businesses because they could not afford to keep footing repair bills for frequent criminal attacks to their shops.

Jason Bright, owner of Brogden Street’s Rustique restaurant, is behind a campaign to get Ulverston Town Council to push for CCTV cameras on Brogden Street.

He said: “There was another spate of vandalism in the early hours of September 13 and if there was a camera on Brogden Street they would have caught them.

“It all depends if the proposal would involve a camera there. They have to think about the taxpayers and start looking after the shop owners.

“We are the town that has beaten the supermarkets and if it was not for the shop owners and our determination, we would not have survived.”