Agenda item

Report ES15077

This report had been written by Mr Jim McGowan (Head of Environmental Protection) and Mr McGowan attended to brief the Committee on the report, and to answer any questions.

Mr McGowan notified the Committee that the revised completion date for the CCTV refurbishment was now January 2016. He then explained to the Committee the reasons for this delay. The Committee heard that a formal appeal had been raised against the letting of the contract originally and that this had to be dealt with by LBB’s legal team before matters could be progressed. The appeal was lost, and the refurbishment contract was awarded to Tyco. Subsequent to this, the Government had drafted measures to change the law concerning certain parking enforcement functions, and this meant that a new proposal of works had to be presented to the Secretary of State which caused additional delay. The current position is that Tyco have been instructed to proceed with works subject to approval, in order to reduce the risk of control room failure.

Mr McGowan explained to the Committee that an eight week factory build of equipment was required prior to installation in January 2016. Following this, there would be a period of testing to ensure that LBB were satisfied that everything was working properly. The monitoring contract had been awarded

to OCS, and the maintenance contract had been awarded to Eurovia. The KPI’s concerning monitoring had been reported and were on target.

Mr McGowan proceeded to discuss the matter of charging for CCTV evidential packages. Currently a charge of £50.00 was made for private third party requests, and no charges were made to the Police. It was noted that other boroughs charged the same as this, but that some boroughs only charged £10.00. The Committee discussed the matter of charging for evidential packages.

Cllr Julian Benington enquired how long it took to provide an evidential package, and stated that the charge should reflect costs. Mr McGowan responded that the time varied. Sometimes it just took two or three minutes, but if the CCTV operators were dealing with a vague police query, then the work could take two hours. An average timescale was in the region of fifteen minutes. Cllr Tickner felt that a £10.00 charge should be made in all cases, and that if an evidential package was subsequently provided, then a £50.00 charge should be levied. He asked for an explanation of the term, “privacy zone software”. He wondered if it was prudent to have a CCTV operator employed on a full time basis from 9.00am to 5.00pm, and felt that it may be more beneficial to have an operator working full time from midnight into the early hours of the morning.  Mr McGowan explained that the privacy software enabled certain zones that the cameras covered to be blocked out to ensure privacy. 

Cllr Samaris Huntington Thresher enquired if other local authorities charged the Police for evidential packages. It was noted that the boroughs that the Committee were aware of did not charge the Police. Mr Nigel Davies (Executive Director of Environmental and Community Services) felt that it would not be a good idea to charge the Police in view of the current severe pressures on their budgets. Cllr Thresher stated that she was opposed to charging the Police. Cllr Thresher asked about the KPI monitoring data, and wondered why some of the areas exceeded 100% target. Mr McGowan answered that in these areas the targets were exceeded. Cllr Thresher expressed the view that in some of the examples on the monitoring data, the percentages were not of any use.

Cllr Thresher stated that it may be a good idea to look at what other councils were charging, and the Executive Director agreed to look into this. Cllr Tickner moved that all applications should be charged at £10.00, and that £50.00 should be charged to third parties when evidential packages could be provided; there would be no charges to the Police; this was seconded by Cllr Richard Williams.

RESOLVED that

(1) the contents of the report be noted

(2) the following charges for CCTV evidential packages be recommended to the Portfolio Holder:

·  there would be a flat rate charge of £10.00 for all applications

·  where evidential packages were provided an additional £50.00 charge would be levied

·  so where an evidential package was supplied, there would be a total charge of £60.00

·  there would be no charges raised for providing evidential packages to the Police