WARRINGTON has the third highest crime to CCTV ratio in the country according to new research.
It’s estimated that the UK now has 5.2 million CCTV cameras as the country becomes ‘Big Brother Britain.’
With a surveillance centre hailed as critical in the recent capture of escaped terror suspect Daniel Khalife, security experts at Get Licensed have now revealed the UK towns and cities with the most public security cameras, in addition to revealing which areas had the highest crime to CCTV camera ratio.
Warrington has the third highest crime to CCTV ratio. Despite the crime rate in Warrington being much higher than in second-place Sheffield at 25.07 crimes per 10,000 people, Warrington has much better public CCTV coverage with 1.56 cameras per 10,000 people, resulting in a higher overall score when comparing the two factors.
North Tyneside is the area with the highest crime to CCTV ratio. This ratio compares the amount of council-operated public CCTV per head with the local crime rate. This high score suggests that North Tyneside requires additional CCTV provisions to protect residents and businesses while preventing further crime.
Sheffield is the area with the second-highest crime to CCTV ratio. Sheffield has just 1.06 public CCTV cameras for every 10,000 residents, compared to 18.71 crimes.
Commenting on the findings of the survey a Warrington Borough Council spokesperson said: “CCTV is recognised by Cheshire Constabulary as one of their key tools in the fight against crime and disorder. It plays an active role in the prevention and detection of crime, acts as a very strong deterrent and reassures the public that the town is a safe place to visit. We work closely with the police on a daily basis and provide evidential footage of incidents to assist the police with their enquiries.”
Get Licensed wanted to investigate CCTV provision and spending in UK local authorities. To do this, they sent Freedom of Information Requests to all London councils, as well as to the next 100 largest local authorities by population.
In these FOI requests, they asked for the total number of fixed-location CCTV cameras in public locations operated by the council, as well as the total amount spent on CCTV provision in the 2022 calendar year. They received usable data from 79 separate local authorities, which was compiled to create this report.
First, they revealed the UK local authorities with the most CCTV cameras, according to the data provided. They then combined this with ONS population data to reveal the local authorities with the most and least council-operated public CCTV cameras per 10,000 people.
They then took the FOI data showing the amount spent on CCTV in each area and combined it with the same population data to reveal the areas that spent the most money on CCTV provision per resident, as well as the areas that spent the least.
Next, they used ONS crime data to compare the crime rate per 10,000 people in each local authority area with the rate of council-operated public cameras. This allowed them to calculate the crime per camera, with higher figures indicating that crime outweighs CCTV provision, and vice-versa. They used this metric to reveal the areas with the greatest and least need for additional CCTV provision.
Council data for the cost of CCTV was not available for the calendar year 2022 from some local authorities. In these cases, data for the 2021/22 financial year was used instead. All data reflects the information provided by the councils in their FOI responses, though respondents may have interpreted requests in slightly different ways, which could affect the rigidity of the data.
