A NEW CCTV control room to be built in Ely could help to crack down on crime in the district. Plans for a new high-tech camera control room are being drawn up by East Cambridgeshire District Council (ECDC) which it hopes will bring a significant increase

A NEW CCTV control room to be built in Ely could help to crack down on crime in the district.

Plans for a new high-tech camera control room are being drawn up by East Cambridgeshire District Council (ECDC) which it hopes will bring a significant increase in the number of arrests and prosecutions made in the district.

There are 28 CCTV cameras positioned in Ely and 12 in Soham with the pictures recorded and monitored at a control room in Cambridge.

Under the existing system, when a crime is reported, officers in the district have to travel to Cambridge and trawl through the video to review an incident which can be a lengthy process, taking up to three hours.

Under plans for the new scheme, however, an Ely-based control room would be manned by dedicated staff on a new wireless system that would allow them to witness and report the incidents to police as they happened.

Ste Thornley, ECDC officer leading the project, told the Ely Standard: "We conducted a thorough review of our CCTV service in East Cambridgeshire and we concluded that one of our main priorities was to have a control room based in Ely.

"The system we have in place at the moment is excellent and we certainly have no problems with it but we felt that a control room based in Ely would help to reduce our costs and would also help the police when they want to review evidence."

The new control room would cover all cameras in Ely and Soham and the council hope a new dedicated service would save money and help to reduce crime in the area.

Mr Thornley said: "We hope that by introducing a new control room in Ely we will see an increase in incidents reviewed and arrests made across both Ely and Soham."

In 2007/08 a total of 194 incidents caught on camera in Ely and Soham were referred to police, bringing a total of 99 arrests as a result.

The contract to manage and run the new CCTV control room, set to be based at the council offices in Grange Lane, is out to tender until March, with council officers optimistic that a new system could be up and running in time for July.