THE Bude Community CCTV Project has now been running for six months, and has four cameras monitoring various areas of the town. Here, Sgt Lynden Hughes of the Bude Neighbourhood Policing Team explains why he believes Bude's system is the first of its type in the country, and how the installation of the system has had a positive effect on Bude.

The Bude Community CCTV Project (BCCP) is a unique local partnership that has been developed to improve the community safety of the residents of Bude and its many visitors.

The project was born out of a difficulty in securing funding to maintain and improve the ageing and failing town centre CCTV system as all attempts to secure funding from established funding streams proved negative. It was a very real prospect that the system would fold and that efforts to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour would be affected.

Sgt Lynden Hughes of the Bude Neighbourhood Policing Team explained further: "It was a great source of frustration to the local policing team that funds appeared to be readily available for large-scale urban CCTV systems but not for small town CCTV systems. Our team recognised however that small towns in Devon and Cornwall, towns such as Bude, have a strong volunteer culture and sense of community. It was these inherent strengths that the policing team were keen to build on."

To progress the ambition of the Bude policing team a number of community meetings were convened. These involved numerous local voluntary groups, North Cornwall District Council departments and Bude and Stratton Town Council.

Through these meetings a consensus developed that Bude needed a public CCTV system. It was recognised that such a system could be provided if the community pooled its CCTV resources into one community based system. It was also identified that the monitoring of the system could be undertaken by trained and vetted volunteers recruited from the community under the Devon and Cornwall Police Volunteer Program.

Initial commitments made by the Bude Canal Regeneration Project, NCDC Beach Services and NCDC Community Fund allowed the project to purchase three pan, tilt and zoom cameras together with the infrastructure necessary for a control room which was set up at Bude Police Station.

Bude Pub Watch

Bude and Stratton Town Council committed the use of their 'Cherry Picker' crane to assist with the maintenance of the cameras and local businesses committed to assisting with sponsoring the maintenance of one of the cameras. Bude Pub Watch also adopted the Bude Community CCTV Project as the scheme they would raise funds for in 2008/2009.

On May 27, 2008, the inaugural Annual General Meeting took place at the Falcon Hotel, and those present included, Bude and Stratton Town Council, NCDC, Bude Pub Watch, Bude Shop Watch, Bude Neighbourhood Watch, Bude Business Forum, NCDC Beach Services, Bude Carnival Committee, Bude Partnership, Bude Rotary Club, Bude Canal Regeneration Project, Bude Tourist Board, Bude Youth Project and the Bude Canal and Harbour Society.

The project was formally created under a constitution and an executive committee was formed to oversee the running of the project. Each month the executive committee of the project meets to discuss the operation of the system in order to ensure its compliance under the Data Protection Act, the Information Commiss­ioners Codes of Practice and the BCCP's own codes of practice.

Four camera sites

The system has been running operationally since November 2008 and is registered with the Infor­mation Commissioner. It currently has four camera sites positioned at the following locations: Neetside Centre; Falcon Bridge; The Castle and Crooklets Beach.

There are currently four members of the community who monitor the images every week. These volunteers have received initial system training and will shortly be attending a BTEC Level 2 course in CCTV Operation. When monitoring the images the volunteers have access to the police communications system and can directly communicate with all officers on duty in the area and the Force control room.

The system has been designed using WiFi technology which means any organisation or business who are looking to install a public space CCTV camera can easily purchase a camera that could link into the system and hence be monitored by the community volunteers.

Sgt Hughes said: "There have been some fantastic benefits in creating this unique project. It has truly created a mechanism whereby the community can get fully involved in reducing crime and anti-social behaviour in their locality. Those involved are seeing firsthand the challenges police officers face and likewise officers have gained a greater appreciation of what our communities want from us and that people really do want to get involved to make things better.

"Due to the live monitoring of the system officers are being directed to incidents long before they develop into actual offences. This early intervention has assisted in reducing crime in the area and has increased the policing presence, as due to early intervention, less people are being arrested and being taken some distance to our custody centre. The system, operating procedures, codes of practice, and constitution have all been written in such a way that they provide a complete template for similar small town systems to be created throughout the county."

He added: "We believe our community run CCTV system is the first of its type in the country, a

system that is run and operated by the community for the collective safety of the community. The Bude policing team are very proud of the difference our community are making through this unique partnership."