Over at the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian, a typical story about failings in the local CCTV network, prompted by residents who have had to repeatedly point out that one of the cameras is pointing at the wall to which it's mounted;
The camera which is attached to one of the tower blocks on the Orchard Estate, in Woodford Green, is part of a network of 35 devices originally installed to improve security for residents.
The discovery will do little to allay the concerns of people living in the area who claim that several other CCTV cameras there are now either broken or that their footage is too poor quality to be used as evidence by the police.
As I said yesterday, these cameras don't just pose privacy concerns; they also have many practical problems, like the ones currently being experienced by the good people of Woodford. These problems are usually ignored when the expenditure for installation, monitoring, maintenance and data storage for cameras is signed off, but, unhappily, it's residents who have to live with the failings of CCTV in an environment in which, with a finite pot of expenditure for law enforcement, there are fewer policemen around than there were before.
By Alex Deane
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