Council’s secret weapon to tackle crime has had ‘massive impact’

A council’s brand new secret CCTV control room is having a “massive” impact, those behind it claim.

Newark and Sherwood District Council now has its own, dedicated live camera control room that operates 24/7.

Before the £700,000 facility was given set up – its location a secret – a team monitored 170 cameras dotted across four boroughs and districts, including Broxtowe, Ashfield, Rushcliffe.

The new CCTV control room, which has just under 100 cameras, will now focus solely on crime and anti-social behaviour happening in the Newark and Sherwood district.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) got to go inside the control room on Wednesday (September 16).

A joystick is used to move and zoom-in on each camera, all but four of which are now digital and ultra-high quality.

Dozens of screens cycle through cameras all over the district, including smaller areas such as Southwell.

Some cameras even have the capability to shine a spotlight on troublemakers, while most also have a night-vision option for the darker, winter nights.

In the last quarter of 2025/26, the number of proactive incidents responded to by the control room was 79.

This has since risen to 467 under the new dedicated control room, council figures from the first quarter of 2026/27 show.

Councillor Paul Taylor, portfolio holder for public protection and community relations, said: “It’s absolutely massive.

“That’s a five-fold increase in pro-activity and it is a real step-change in delivering safety for the people of Newark and Sherwood.

“There has been a whole range [of incidents]. There have been things like e-bikes, identifying people from that. There have been attempted robberies, and we’ve actually supported that.

“The CCTV system has even been used in some very serious criminal cases because we’ve got the footage in high quality.

“We’ve got the capability now to be able to live-stream up to four cameras to the police HQ, so there is a really close partnership relationship working far closer than we could previously when we were covering a number of different districts. Now the police officers know we can be in touch really quickly.”

The new control room cost around £700,000, with integration of internal CCTV systems costing another £40,000.

The authority was intending to use £350,000 from the government’s Towns Fund to pay for the project, but after the release of funding was delayed to April this year, it decided to pay for the project itself.

“I would suggest it has probably doubled the safety for people walking around town,” Cllr Taylor added.

“But there is also another message that is really important: We can do a lot with CCTV but if the public see things please report them, because we need to know of incidents.”