OKEHAMPTON Town Council has been urged to act fast to obtain funding so long-planned CCTV cameras in the town centre and park can go ahead.

David Eaton, from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) in Devon and Cornwall, told councillors they should put in an application for a share of a pot of money for local councils to install CCTV for public safety.

He said police and crime commissioner Alison Hernandez had put a pot of money aside for community CCTV schemes like the one planned for Okehampton.

However, her position was a political one, and Ms Hernandez would be standing for election in May next year, the council should put in an application as soon as possible.

‘The best guarantee to getting the funding is to put an application in as soon as you can,’ he said. ‘In terms of ring-fencing the funding, it is much easier to do that if I can say you have got an application in and we won’t walk away afterwards in terms of support.’

The town council wants to put ten cameras in the town centre and three in Simmons Park, which has recently suffered a spate of vandalism.

In common with other towns in Devon, the council is now looking at funding this by applying to the PCC for money to link into the wider police monitoring CCTV system.

The CCTV can be useful if people go missing as well as find evidence of serious crime.

The parish council would not have access to the images on the system, which would effectively be monitored by the police.

However, they would benefit the town by providing police officers with evidence of crime and anti-social behaviour.

Mr Eaton told councillors that the scheme was already well-established in Cornwall, with CCTV from a number of towns already being monitored from the Cornwall Fire Service headquarters near Camborne.

‘£200,000 has been set aside for capital investment in Cornwall and now there is more than 11 towns in the network with four or five more going through a similar process to yourselves,’ he said. ‘In Devon, we don’t have a similar control room to Cornwall Fire which is effectively embedded within a council [Cornwall Council]. However, Torbay and Plymouth [police] both have major 24-hour control rooms and they are keen to be involved.

‘In order to access PCC funding, your system would need to be plugged into a control room so officers can access any camera within Devon and Cornwall. It becomes a giant spider’s web of CCTV across the region.’

He said the PCC would provide a 30 per cent of the cost of installing and linking up Okehampton’s CCTV system, up to a maximum of £15,000.

The decision on where to site the cameras would be a joint decision between the town council and the police.

Mr Eaton added: ‘The investment criteria is that you make a commitment for five years operation once you have received our grant because what we won’t want to do is invest in a system that a change of council results in being made redundant.’

Councillor Tony Leech urged action: ‘This has probably been my 12th year of trying to get CCTV in this town. We have agreed locations, please could we just get it on an agenda quickly.’

Town councillors duly agreed to discuss whether to go ahead with an application to the PCC at their next meeting on July 21.