Inside Dudley Council's CCTV control room
Powerful new CCTV cameras monitoring the streets in part of the Black Country will help crackdown on crime, say bosses.
The cameras keeping watch over Dudley can zoom in 36 times the distance from the camera with images beamed back to the control room where a bank of huge monitors are operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
And it should now be set for a boost with plans to invest more money into the system, with Dudley Council looking to add an extra £320,000 a year for the next three years to make the network more effective.
This follows a £1.7 million overhaul of the cameras over the past year to replace ageing, outdated cameras with new, state of the art units.
Six cameras were replaced at Castle Gate in Dudley, following the installation of hundreds of new cameras in town centres around the borough.
More cameras were installed in town centres in Sedgley, Lye and Brierley Hill as part of phase two of the programme, with cameras going up in Coronation Gardens in Dudley late last year.
Dudley council says this gives them greater capacity to monitor town centres and hotspot crime areas, while providing live CCTV images to the control room in conjunction with West Midlands Police.
On top of that, the council has been able to launch its You’ve Been Shamed initiative where footage of fly-tippers can be shared with the public to help catch them.
Richard Sharman, security officer at Dudley council, took us on a tour of the new facilities. He said: “The new security measures in place are fantastic, and some of the best security cameras I have seen as employed in the sector. It means over the Christmas holidays, people can be safe and assured the council is looking after them and preventing violent crime, and especially thefts and burglaries.
“Some of our cameras are able to zoom at 36 times the distance from the camera, which is amazing.”
Councillor Laura Taylor-Childs, cabinet member responsible for CCTV, said: “It is fantastic to see improvements into our security operations here in Dudley.
“The extra investment will help strengthen the process of how we use deployable cameras element allowing us to target problem areas, and hopefully yield results when we can catch and prosecute people who dump rubbish, cause damage and commit any other crimes.
“There is also money for extra staff which will allow us to improve monitoring.
“This investment is a clear signal of intention that we will grow this network as much as we can to make Dudley as safe as we possibly can.”
