Issue 451 – Town council brings CCTV into modern age with £7,000 digital upgrade

WESTBURY Town Council has approved a £7,000 upgrade to the town’s CCTV system.

At a meeting of the council’s general purposes committee on Monday 7th December, the upgrade of the system from an analogue to digital format was approved.
The total cost of the upgrade will come to £7,676, an anticipated cost that was budgeted for by the council in advance.
Westbury Mayor cllr Sue Ezra said, “The new camera will aid the police in their work. The digital camera images are apparently of better quality, and the police can access the information quicker. Previously they would have had to wade through all the different video tapes.
“The town council is paying for the upgrade and it is something that we have budgeted for over a number of years. It’s coming out of this year’s budget and is not in next year’s.”
The current system uses VHS tapes to record images from the town’s six CCTV cameras, which have to be constantly re-recorded over on a rolling basis.
PC Jo Philpott, Westbury town beat manager, said, “The CCTV cameras being updated to digital will help us to identify persons as the picture will be a lot clearer. It also enables us to get the footage a lot quicker as the CCTV operators can review the CCTV whilst the live cameras are still running.”
Cllr Mike Hawkins, who chairs the Westbury Community Safety Group said, “The switch to digital will make the camera system much more reliable and make evidence easier to present to the courts if necessary. It’s a much improved situation, and brings us up to date.”