Massive CCTV Savings in Stoke-on-Trent

Stoke-on-Trent City Council saved £692k on security bills by using CCTV and motion detectors.

22:41 10 October 2018

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has significantly reduced the cost of keeping its buildings secure by using CCTV and motion detectors. Previously, the council spends a total of £1.6million a year on contracted security services due to ‘a lack of expertise, focus and control.’ In order to cut costs, the council invested £180,000 on CCTV cameras, motion detection, alarms and other technology “to avoid all but response guarding costs.” 

 

The committee report states: “The team’s actions have provided exceptional results, and the CCTV and corporate security team remains focused 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.

 

“There was a proposal to create a separate arms-length council company to do this.

 

“That’s still on the table but right now they are doing such a good job to reduce costs with finding savings.

 

“It’s really good news that we have gone from spending an extortionate amount of taxpayers’ money on security to delivering a really good saving for the taxpayers’ purse.”