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One suggestion to save Boston Borough Council money in the future is to re-examine its CCTV service - which could be an idea that makes some sense.
Not for the first time, one of the country’s smallest local authorities is up there among the big spenders when it comes to throwing the serious money around.
All told, between 2007 and 2011, councils took control of 51,600 CCTV cameras, which cost £515 million to install, operate and maintain – and which could pay for 4,121 police constables or 5,894 PCSOs.
In something of a statement of the obvious, Big Brother Watch says that CCTV has been viewed as a cheap alternative to conventional policing, with no demonstrable equivalent success in reducing crime - and is a costly placebo for many local authorities to appease neighbourhoods suffering anti-social behaviour problems.
We have expressed our doubts about CCTV in Boston before.
How often have we read reports in the local "newspapers" of culprits being brought to book by CCTV?
Seldom, if ever.
And since the much heralded re-launch of the campaign to publish CCTV pictures of litterers, how many have we heard of being identified and fined for the offence?
None.
Our chart at the top of the page, shows that – although costs are falling, in the financial year 2010-11, Boston Borough Council spent £353,000 on CCTV – almost £1,000 a day.
That’s an awful lot of money – which cannot be compared to results.
How many crimes have been brought to court because of images captured on CCTV?
No-one has told us.
The main argument used in support of CCTV is its value as a deterrent – but again, this is something that cannot be quantified – how long is a piece of string?
Now, it seems that the council is looking at a two-pronged approach to CCTV.
Firstly it is considering future coverage of the Fenside Estate, which – with 11 cameras - has the highest number of any residential areas in the borough.
Fenside regularly features in the top ten per cent of the most deprived council wards in the country, and also has a high rate of unemployment.
Historically, it also had high rates of crime – but the latest figures show that it is neither better nor worse than other council wards in Boston.
So the council is now said to be questioning the “value for money” that its Fenside cameras return, and is seeking opinions from Lincolnshire Police and Boston Mayflower among others.
But why review Fenside in isolation?
Pilgrim Hospital and the Redstone Industrial Estate each have four cameras, Boston College has three on each campus, and there are two in Kirton. The rest are scattered around Boston’s built-up area, including Daisy Dale and Wellington Road.
So how about looking at the “value for money” from each individual camera? It must surely be possible.
In another look at the way the service is run, the council is considering either taking on the monitoring of the CCTV systems of the City of Lincoln and South Kesteven District Council - or letting them monitor us.
Either way, that sounds like a recipe for disaster, as the one thing that is essential to CCTV monitoring is a comprehensive knowledge of the locality covered, which would certainly be diminished - or even worse lost completely – if the service were farmed out.
We recall ’phoning Lincolnshire Police shortly after it started routing calls to Lincoln, and found it impossible to make the operator understand that we were in Boston, and where we were talking about.
And please … don’t say it will be different with CCTV … because it won’t!
You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.
Our former blog is archived at: http://bostoneyelincolnshire.blogspot.com
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