Issue - meetings

The Operations Manager presented the report to the Committee. He said that the partnership continued to look to improve standards across the whole partnership and was looking at alternative ways of working to help alleviate budgets. He informed Members that the partnership had four RIPA requests from the police and had no data breaches.

The Operations Manager said that the team had trialled downloading CCTV footage via a link which was successful but were now waiting for the police to provide the team with the relevant protocols to launch the service. He explained that currently, police must attend the Control Room to download footage onto a disc.

The Operations Manager further reported that the number of mobile cameras across the partnership was increasing and Hertsmere had recently purchased five cameras. He updated Members on the ShopWatch and PubWatch radio link which was now digitalised and working well in seven towns that were monitored. There were 250 radio users which helped with continuity within those towns and was something the partnership would like to expand.

The Operations Manager invited all Members of the Committee to the Control Room to see how it operates.

Councillor Curtis referred to Appendix A of the report which stated that there were no proposed changes to the Code of Conduct. He asked the Operations Manager if he was confident that the operations in the CCTV service were as good as they could be.

The Operations Manager said there were no major amendments to the Code except the change in the reporting system that the Control Room use.

Councillor Newmark thanked the Officer for the informative report. He asked if the Officers could explain more about the protocols that they were waiting on from the police in order to move to a cloud based file sharing system. He said that he recalled it being an issue 18 months ago and the Constabulary regularly reported to the Hertsmere Scrutiny Committee about their frustrations at not being able to download footage easily. He asked when the issue would be sorted.

The Control Room Manager said that the service had proven that they can upload footage to a secure server but the server needed to be provided by the police alongside any protocol for sending the correct links to load to a secure file system. He said the system needed to conform to the relevant GDPR protocols and enquiries had been made but he had not received any response to date.

The Operations Manager added that the review was now with a Sergeant who was looking at resourcing a full time member of staff to the downloading suite. There was currently only one part time member of staff manning the suite who carries out all the downloading of footage for the whole of the Hertfordshire Police Service. It was a police issue but one that the team were trying to move forward.

Councillor Boylan asked if the issue could be escalated to ensure it was resolved quickly.

The Operations Manager  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6