Vicon provides phased video management CCTV solution for Tamworth Town Centre

The client

Tamworth is located 23 kilometres north-east of Birmingham. It has a resident population of approximately 80,000 but also attracts a large number of visitors wishing to enjoy the Town's restaurants, shops and tourist attractions including Tamworth Castle. The Council considers the security of its residents to be of paramount importance and has also looked to provide a safe environment for people who visit the Town Centre. There is therefore a zero tolerance attitude to anti-social behaviour, vandalism and theft. With this in mind, the Council invested in a CCTV system some years ago which could monitor activity 24/7 within the Town Centre.

The existing CCTV system comprised 77 cameras which were all wired directly to the Town's control room where they were recorded for twelve hours a day on analogue VCRs.

The challenge

"Our old analogue based CCTV system had done a good job over the years but it was clear that we were missing out on the advantages that the latest advances in digital and IP network based CCTV technology could deliver," said Larry Phillips, Tamworth Borough Council's CCTV Control Manager. "The challenge for us was how to upgrade the system within the confines of a limited capital budget. Whilst we would naturally have preferred to have everything in place from day one, the sensible approach was to look to work with a manufacturer that had a system architecture which would allow us to take a phased approach to the introduction of new technology."

The expertise of Larry Phillips and his colleagues in the implementation and management of CCTV had already been recognised by the CCTV Users Group with the presentation of the 2009 CCTV Team of the Year Award and the CCTV Management and Innovation Award.

One of the Council's objectives was to look at utilising rapid deployment cameras rather than just add more fixed cameras and an IP based system offered the option to do this cost-effectively. "We certainly needed to move away from the process which involved recording onto tapes and having to change them on a regular basis. More importantly, we wanted to increase the effectiveness of our CCTV system by improving image quality and have additional flexibility as to where live or recorded images could be viewed," added Larry Phillips.

The evaluation process

Working closely with Paul Smith and David Bromley, ADT's Technical Support Engineers, and Account Manager Chris Neville, Larry Phillips and his colleagues took a long hard look at ten different manufacturers to see who could provide a complete solution. "We got down to a short list of three manufacturers who on paper seemed to provide the best options and then asked each to provide samples of their digital video recorders so that we could evaluate which combination would best match our requirements," said Larry Phillips.