Thames Valley Police, Slough

When Veracity sat down with representatives from Slough Borough Council, it was agreed that a surveillance solution would need to allow for multiple security and monitoring to be carried out simultaneously.

This is familiar ground for Veracity. VIEWSCAPE, Veracity’s custom-built open platform integration software, grants clients the capacity to undertake a range of surveillance exercise from a single, integrated interface.

How was the solution reached?

Peter Webster, the Council’s CCTV and Careline Manager, recognised that Veracity could enable its control room to seamlessly multi-task: “The Veracity VIEWSCAPE product was a natural choice to seamlessly integrate with both these technologies plus our traditional analogue based systems to provide the control room with open platform integration application with a comprehensive incident and KPI reporting package together with the ability to integrate not only alarms and monitoring from Slough Borough Council but to the wider community and the private sector in the future.”

Now, the Council’s CCTV control room is able to monitor alarms, keep track of the locations and of valuable assets, automatically produce reports on equipment usage, and ensure the safety of staff working in dangerous places.

An excerpt from the Council’s website outlines the benefits and functionality of Slough Borough Council’s upgraded control room: “The centre boasts a state of the art digital video monitoring and recording system capable of producing high quality video evidence for the identification of suspects and the prosecution of offenders. We are also able to monitor remote alarm systems, out of hours key holding, Lone Worker and emergency contact services”.

Like other councils across the country, Slough Borough Council invested in its CCTV capabilities to future-proof its control room. As well as being able to increase public confidence in the Council’s ability to monitor the borough, the upgrade will aid cost-efficiency in the long-run. Automating time and labour-intensive security exercises, such as recording all incidents and reacting to alarms, has freed up control room personnel, who can now focus on other responsibilities.

In addition, control room operators can access detailed information on the usage of surveillance technologies. As a result, technologies that are not used heavily can be relocated to aid the efficient use of resources.

But unlike others local authorities, the Council was recognised for its usage of an innovatory control room. In 2013, the National CCTV User Group presented the Council with an award in recognition of “innovation” and “cost effectiveness”. On the award, Peter Fry, director of the National CCTV User Group, said: “From innovative ways of improving cost effectiveness and the service, to securing funding to upgrade the control centre, Slough is forward thinking, shedding the pedestrian ways of doing it one way because that is always how they have done it.”