Good practice for the management and operation of town centre CCTV

As part of a programme to develop methods of improving the effectiveness of CCTV security systems, the Home Office Police Scientific Development Branch (PSDB) in the UK has produced generic good practice guidelines for the effective use and management of public area CCTV systems. The guidelines, in the form of easy to use checklists, are based on surveys of 20 operational town centre systems. The surveys employed standardised assessment tools to obtain the views of those directly involved in the operation and management of the system. They identified a number of human factor areas that significantly impact on the integrity of CCTV systems. These included partnership between the police and the system staff, selection and training of CCTV operators, the use of standard operating procedures, job design and the control room environment. The paper outlines the main findings of the survey. It also illustrates the value of the checklists during the planning phase of new systems and evaluation of existing systems