Stoke-on-Trent Council reduce security costs through CCTV technology

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has managed to reduce security costs by nearly £700,000 by installing CCTV cameras and motion detectors in and around its buildings.

The council used to spend £1.6 million a year on contracted security services, which was blamed on ‘a lack of expertise, focus and control’. They centralised control within one council team, which reduced spending.

Installing CCTV cameras, motion detectors, alarms and other technology across six sites cost the council £180,000, but resulted in savings of £612,000 since the only ongoing security cost were “response guarding”.

£80,000 more savings were achieved by altering patrol patterns and types.

Originally the council intended to set up their own security company in order to deal with their £1.6 million security costs, but that isn’t necessary anymore thanks to the technology savings.

The committee report states: “The team’s actions have provided exceptional results, and the CCTV and corporate security team remains focussed on delivering every savings opportunity possible whilst satisfying our financial, health, safety and welfare, and moral duty to protect our staff, the public, physical assets and wider city interests from harm.

“The principle objective was to responsibly reduce cost without putting staff, public or assets at intolerable risk.”

Councillor Dan Jellyman, cabinet member for regeneration, said: “In 2014/15 the city council spent £1.6m on contracted security services. Since then the team has done amazing work to bring that down. Now there is a minimum £692,000 of annual savings in the coming financial year, which is about an 82 per cent reduction in vacant site security costs, which is no small feat.

“It is clear they have worked hard to manage each site as an individual site and get best value for taxpayers.”

CCTV SURVEILLANCE – TOP UK SUPPLIER AND INSTALLATION CONTRACTOR OF DIGITAL CCTV SYSTEMS

One of the key elements enabling Stoke-on-Trent City Council to reduce security costs was remote monitoring.

At CCTV Surveillance, we can offer you this service. We have seen it save countless customers money just like the council due to less staff being needed on patrol and lower insurance costs.

The CCTV Surveillance monitoring centre is staffed 24/7 all year round by highly trained operators, all of whom share a passion for security. They can take immediate action on the video footage that they are alerted to, either by using the intercom link to warn away offenders or calling the police and specified keyholders.

Our top-range systems use the latest digital technology to provide real time viewing and control of cameras via a broadband connection. For further security and information gathering we can provide you with facial recognition software (including a revolutionary rapid deployment kit) and automatic number-plate recognition.

We provide several other security services as well as remote monitoring, such as our System Takeover, where we can take on the time and responsibility of running and maintaining your existing security system for you. All of our CCTV systems can also integrate with our access control systems. For example, this could allow the automatic opening or barring of doors if a certain person is picked up on the cameras.

If you are worried about the security of your premises, we can perform an in-depth assessment with a full spectrum penetration test which replicates real-life threats –  everything from social engineering to lock picking and getting past alarms. We can also provide a smaller physical penetration-only test.

If you want to reduce security costs today, please contact us on enquiries@cctv-surveillance.co.uk or ring 01480 223955.