Digital upgrade transforms town’s CCTV

A major transformation of Colchester’s CCTV system is currently underway as part of our commitment to help reduce crime and bolster community safety across the town centre and wider city.

The work is part of a major investment to upgrade the town’s digital assets and is being delivered by Colchester Amphora Trading Ltd (CATL), one of the commercial companies we set up in 2018.

Work started in January to replace the 20-year-old analogue CCTV network in the town centre with a state-of-the-art digital system. This has involved upgrading the fibre optic infrastructure that connected over 100 cameras to a central control room through an extensive network of mainly underground ducts across the town centre. As a result of the modernisation programme almost 200 new cameras are being installed.

This work closely overlaps with the rollout of ultrafast broadband across the town centre, which is helping expand the area that can be covered by the CCTV cameras, and the use of cameras that can provide higher quality images for the police to use in any prosecutions.

Over the next three months, additional cameras will be installed in hot-spot areas including King Edward Quay, the Greenstead shopping parade, and locations in the Dutch Quarter. The Northern Gateway Sports Park has also been linked to the new central monitoring system.

The final phase of works, due to be completed in May, will provide a modern monitoring suite for the new system, which is operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week by CATL staff.

Our work with CATL saw us scooping two highly prestigious local government awards last year – being named ‘Best Commercial Council’ in the Municipal Journal (MJ) Achievement Awards, and ‘Entrepreneurial Council’ at the Local Government Chronicle awards.