Wrexham Councillors Back CCTV Proposals

The Council Exec board met this afternoon to discuss proposals for an integrated public space CCTV system for North Wales.

The proposed system would see a ‘two centre regional solution’, which would involve a centre based in Wrexham and a second at the Fire and Rescue Service Joint Communications Centre (JCC) at St. Asaph. Councillors were urged to support the two centre regional option over a sub regional system.

CCTV monitoring in North Wales currently takes place through six separate operations, with one in each local authority area. Wrexham itself  is currently using older analogue equipment and has 92 cameras in the town. There are currently 16 months left in the current CCTV system. However Cllr Hugh Jones suggested that it was important to think of a Plan B to fall back upon.

At the Regional Leadership Board meeting on 1 February 2013, a consensus was reached to proceed with a regional operation using two centres. However this is subject to a bid which has been submitted recently to the Regional Collaboration Fund for £2.4m towards the costs of setting up the new service.

The Regional Leadership Board requested that a covering report be submitted to each of the six councils requesting permission to proceed to preparing a full business case. A meeting will take place on the 20th of March regarding the situation.

Cllr Hugh Jones said: “For three years we have been pushing for a regional system, we got to a point where in January at the regional lead members meeting that we had an agreement in principle for a two centre operation.”

An answer regarding the proposed two centre regional system depends on whether all 6 councils sign up, with a decision to be known by the end of March.

A further Wrexham.com report on the CCTV proposals can be found here.