Bristol's £8m CCTV upgrade approved by mayor

The council uses CCTV cameras to monitor areas where there is a high risk of public disorder

Some £8m is to be spent on an upgrade of Bristol's surveillance camera system, mayor George Ferguson has said.

Bristol City Council owns the underground cable network which feeds cables around the city for traffic monitoring and other services such as pendant alarms for the elderly.

The network will be upgraded and the council's three in-house CCTV systems will be housed in one control centre.

Costs will be recouped by renting spare network space to the telecoms market.

Control room plans

During the meeting, Mr Ferguson said the upgrade would make the city more resilient, and would bring financial as well as social benefits to the city.

By renting out spare capacity on the 48-mile [approx. 76km] network this could earn the council more than £8m over 10 years, council officers have said.

Fifteen years ago, the council bought the network of fibre and ducting from the digital cable firm, Rediffusion.

Since then it has refurbished the network and rolled out a number of other services such as automatic number place recognition, real-time traffic updates and CCTV in places at risk of public disorder.

But despite this, council officers have said the network technology has now reached the end of its life and repairs may cost up to £5m to keep it going.

Now the proposals have been approved, a new control room will be set up at Temple Street, close to Temple Meads train station.

The mayor also agreed to rent out the spare capacity to a telecoms provider at the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, 6 October.