The management issues confronting town centre security teams across the country are many and varied, with most of our larger cities now employing some form of surveillance system to help combat crime and disorder. However, unwanted petty theft, vandalism, assaults and burglary are also now beginning to impinge on our rural areas.
Encompassing the rolling hills of East Lancashire – and comprising busy towns such as Colne and Nelson that sit alongside more rural communities like Earby and Barnoldswick – is the Borough of Pendle. In recent years, the Borough Council has made it a top priority to ensure the appeal of the area by heavily supporting its already-buoyant tourist industry. Part of that support involves reassuring visitors and residents they’ll be safe and secure.
A Borough-wide trial CCTV scheme was established in 2005 with a view to protecting the Council’s stock of properties and surrounding areas. After realising the benefits of what was both an efficient and economical surveillance solution, the monitoring set-up was greatly expanded in 2006 and further schemes added to the networked system (thereby covering the aforementioned rural tourist centres of Earby and Barnoldswick).
Now known as Housing Pendle Limited, the local housing authority manages 3,371 homes, providing affordable accommodation in the form of efficiently managed and well-maintained properties. Indeed Housing Pendle Limited’s staff work extremely hard to provide that housing (and associated care and support services) for its customers.
Towards community improvement
Housing Pendle Limited is one of the Government’s nine housing market renewal ‘pathfinders’ charged with finding innovative solutions to the problematic housing market collapse in towns across the East Lancashire region (where low demand and negative equity have prevailed). A commendable GB pound 7.4 million has already been invested on improvements to homes in the Borough of Pendle, with part-funding coming from Elevate East Lancashire.
Addressing the issues involved, Housing Pendle Limited initiated multiple improvements to residences and public areas, key to which has been a significant investment in CCTV surveillance technology. Patrick Collins – housing manager at Housing Pendle Limited – takes up the story.
“Over the years, sections of our estates had developed into ‘difficult to let’ environments. These were commonly areas with a high turnover of tenants,” states Collins, “where people moved in and out on a more frequent basis for a variety of reasons, some of them to do with a perceived lack of security and safety.”
In conversation with Security Management Today, Collins continues: “As a local authority housing body, our key priority was necessarily the improvement of housing stock. To facilitate this in the most effective way, and create a long-term solution, we liaised heavily with those people harbouring the greatest experience of these areas – our tenants. During this process, tenants cited improvement of housing stock and the areas in which they live as being central to their well-being and long-term tenancy.”
Directly addressing tenants’ concerns, the trial CCTV programme was instigated and, according to Collins, the results were “astonishing” (enhancing the security of the region, and reflected by an increase in long-term tenancies).
“Following the successful consultation period, we initiated a continual blueprint of improvements to homes and a concerted plan of action to clean up the streets,” adds Collins. “We also examined our ‘defensible space’ priorities, and erected strong perimeter fencing around key ‘hotspots’ such as Community Centres and exposed properties.”
Expanding surveillance capabilities
With the initial surveillance system having made such an impact on the trial areas, it was somewhat inevitable that CCTV capabilities would be extended right across the housing network. To facilitate this, Housing Pendle Limited turned to Panasonic Premier Integrator Crime Prevention Services, who performed comprehensive evaluations of the proposed sites for system expansion.
Collins comments: “From the inception of the project, we worked closely with Crime Prevention Services to manage a staged expansion that has seen several comprehensive surveillance solutions installed across our estates. Images generated by all of the systems are accessible from multiple Control Rooms located around the region.”
Nigel Fairhurst – sales director at Crime Prevention Services – adds: “After the first system was installed in the Marsden Park area, Pendle Borough Council understood the advantages and cost benefits a series of networked surveillance systems would realise. They then commissioned us to equip a further five areas with the same CCTV technology.”
Importantly, Patrick Collins afforded Crime Prevention Services a very clear and simple brief as to what the system requirements would be in the real world. Central to those requirements was the ability to monitor crystal clear images generated at each estate from a purpose-built Control Centre housed inside the Town Hall at Colne (where Housing Pendle Limited is based), and also from each of the estates’ individual Community Centres.
Addressing these desires, Crime Prevention Services installed Panasonic control equipment and a hard-disk recorder at every Community Centre. Both live and recorded footage may be accessed from any part of the network at any control facility (including the main Town Hall Control Centre, which features a 50″ plasma display to pick out even the smallest detail provided by the high resolution cameras).
After each CCTV system was installed, Collins and the other members of the Housing Pendle Limited team supported their inception by highlighting their capabilities at every opportunity, communicating them in their quarterly newsletter circulated to all residents.
Collins explains: “When the systems are initially installed, we use the newsletters to highlight any anti-social behavior captured on camera. This has the excellent effect of reinforcing the systems’ capabilities, and instantly reduces such unwanted occurrences. We’ve even experienced cases where cameras have been erected but not yet connected to the system and this has still resulted in anti-social incident rates instantly falling in the areas concerned. This illustrates the efficiency with which an effectively marketed surveillance solution can counter the troublesome elements we often find blighting today’s society.”
Spreading the security word
Observing the benefits the networked Panasonic surveillance solutions were bringing to the trial areas, the team at Crime Prevention Services was commissioned to expand the system. “Given the quantifiable downturn in anti-social behaviour due to the existing systems, Pendle Borough Council was eager to progress these benefits to the tourist-rich, historical town centres at Barnoldswick and Earby,” comments Nigel Fairhurst.
The civil works ‘challenge’
However, the historic elements of those towns presented a significant challenge to Nigel and his team when it came to surveillance installation and subsequent management.
“In Barnoldswick, for example, a large part of the town centre is paved with historically important cobbles,” states Fairhurst. “To remove them, excavate and install cabling would have been uneconomical for the Borough Council, and somewhat unethical for us as a security installer.”
The necessity for carrying out civil works on 150 years of history was avoided by the use of a wireless wide area network (WAN) designed in-house by Crime Prevention Services. Each camera has been positioned with a line-of-sight to the next unit, ensuring no system ‘blind spots’ whatsoever in addition to uninterrupted WAN transmission of images back to the Barnoldswick Police Station.
Again exclusively employing Panasonic surveillance technology, the Barnoldswick security system is monitored from a purpose-built Control Room located within the Police Station wherein the latest digital recording technology archives evidential footage from the system. “The system has proven to be hugely beneficial in a number of ways,” explains Sergeant Andrew Cartwright. “We employ eight fully-trained CCTV operators on a rotational basis, increasing operator cover over the busy Friday and Saturday evening periods.”
The CCTV operators are regularly briefed by the local community ‘beat’ officers to ensure everyone is fully aware of what the policing team is trying to achieve during any particular period. Police officers are actively encouraged to ask the question: “How am I using my CCTV operator to achieve local objectives today?” and are in direct contact with the Control Room throughout their shift.
Examples of this focused approach include the targeting of underage drinkers and those members of the community encouraging this by purchasing alcohol for young people.
Using the WV-CU650 control keyboard, the experienced CCTV operators ‘manipulate’ the system to include a number of camera pre-set tours. This allows local police officers to use community intelligence in focusing on those areas most likely to suffer from anti-social behaviour or crime at specific times.
“Pre-set tours can be rapidly changed if required to allow the system to evolve with any particular monitored area’s activity and reflect the impact of the CCTV system begins to filter through the community,” says Sergeant Cartwright. “Undoubtedly, this has an influence on potential offenders’ behaviour patterns.”
Cutting down on burglary and theft
Sergeant Cartwright adds: “These carefully planned and constantly refined pre-set tours have proven fruitful in detecting a number of serious offences within Pendle, including burglaries, theft from and of motor vehicles and assaults. The ability for any beat police officer to have 24-hour access to quality images from the new DVRs has made an impressive Borough-wide impact on the detection and prevention of crime and disorder.”
Each of the surveillance system’s ‘Stakeholders’ can view images generated by over 100 cameras that allow a true Borough-wide overview – encompassing the urban residential areas of Housing Pendle or the rural village centre at Barnoldswick. Each community has directly benefited from the introduction of the advanced surveillance solution.
It’s fair to say that the Pendle project is an outstanding example of how police and local residents can work in partnership to tackle local security issues head-on.