The Vale of Glamorgan Council has confirmed that they will be purchasing five deployable CCTV cameras to help deal with anti-social behaviour in local areas.

In 2019/2020 Community Safety carried out a review of the current CCTV provision in the Vale of Glamorgan in line with the requirements placed upon the Council by the CCTV Surveillance Code of Practice.

This review concluded that the 77 cameras that are currently installed around the Vale are no longer fit for purpose given their age, location and current working order.

The Council is in discussions with partners on how best to move forward with the recommendations from the review and a £350,000.00 capital investment was awarded by the Council in July 2019 to support the upgrade and improvement of the CCTV system across the Vale of Glamorgan.

During the last four months of lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic, the Community Safety Team has experienced a significant increase in the number of ASB incidents that occur across the Vale.

In April, ASB incidents showed a 170% increase incidents recorded the same time last year and in May, the Vale experienced an increase of 378% in recorded incidents of ASB compared with the same time last year.

Of the 750 incidents experienced in May, 553 were classified as environmental which is almost entirely made up of incidents that are as a result of COVID-19 breaches.

As the warm weather increases, the Vale traditionally starts to experience higher rates of ASB with gatherings of young people who create issues for:

• other residents, due to antisocial behaviour and nuisance noise levels;
• the environment, by leaving litter and vandalising the areas they gather in;
• themselves, through risky behaviour that leaves them vulnerable and at significant risk of harm.

A combination of 'routine' ASB exacerbated and increased by the additional issues created by COVID-19 is creating significant pressure on community safety services and presents a significant risk to staff and residents within these areas.

The most recent gathering of over 500 young people in Ogmore resulted in a situation where statutory services could not deploy sufficient resources to disperse or affect the situation. This has highlighted the importance of a functioning CCTV system to be able to witness, gather evidence from and deter incidents of ASB that require more than an enforcement/police presence.

The Vale, as a rural and seaside location, presents ample locations that appeal to perpetrators of ASB and for this reason, there are a number of hotspot areas that become problematic during particular moments of the year.

For this reason, deployable CCTV is the most efficient option, given the need to deploy the cameras easily where intelligence and evidence inform the Community Safety Team that problems are happening or expected.

The cameras will be reviewed and managed by the Community Safety Team based at Barry Police Station.

The police have been consulted and are in agreement with the use of deployable CCTV. The locations of the cameras will be agreed between the Council and Police.