The first phase of an ongoing CCTV scheme in Manchester city centre is already proving its value, with an increase in arrest rates and improved deterrence. Nearby, a similar scheme at Manchester Metropolitan University is swinging into action.

It was way back in 1994 that Manchester City Council decided it needed a CCTV scheme as an essential part of the city centre infrastructure. But various events led to delays and the first phase of the scheme didn’t begin until October 1998. Since then, the scheme has shown its value on many occasions and there are plans to extend the scope of the installation in the run-up to the 2002 Commonwealth Games being held in Manchester.

The original plan was based on 10 cameras covering the business and retail areas of central Manchester - including Market Street, the city’s busiest public shopping area. David Walsh, senior project engineer, was seconded from the council’s Security Core Group to evaluate existing schemes and produce recommendations for the council based on these findings.

“One installation we looked at was Liverpool. It was a very good system and was visited by many of the Manchester staff and myself on a number of occasions,” explained David Walsh.

A silver lining

All was going well until September 1996 when a massive bomb blast reduced much of the central shopping area to rubble. “The bomb in central Manchester literally blew a hole in our plans and put us back two years. The area where the bomb was activated was the area that we were going to cover with our CCTV cameras,” recalls Mr Walsh.

When the dust had settled the council commissioned a further feasibility study and decided not to proceed further. At this stage, a City Challenge bid was made to the Home Office, backed by the council’s consultants and the police. 

Every cloud has a silver lining and this one manifested itself in the form of an extra £107,000 from the Home Office to add the to the original £240,000 allocated by the council, bringing the total budget for the first phase of the scheme to almost £350,000.

This additional funding enabled David Walsh to increase the scheme to a 19-camera system, expanding the scope of the coverage from the initial area to also encompass St Anne’s Square, Deansgate, Cross Street and part of the banking quarter.

Avoiding gimmicks

David was charged with getting the installation off the ground after the bomb and, to that end, he visited a number of other city centre installation schemes around the country. plettac CCTV schemes at Liverpool and Peterborough, combined with the council’s experience of its own plettac cameras in other parts of the city, led to the choice of these cameras for the Manchester scheme.

“There are lots of different control systems out there with all of the available gimmicks - but for every one I’ve seen working I saw one that was not working,” he explained. “I always feel that when I’m out looking for any technical aspect of any system, quite often the best answers you get are from the guys using that system and they’re the honest brokers. 

“Their feedback was very useful and through that I made up my mind at a fairly early stage that I was going to run with plettac. The colour, the resolution - everything was better on the plettac cameras.

In July 1997 the City Council went out to tender, resulting in Technology Solutions of Rawenstall winning the installation contract. The system and equipment was installed over the next 12 months with the official opening of the first phase of the scheme in October 1998.

Opting for domes

It was decided to use dome housings for the cameras, for several reasons. One of the most important of these was that some 60% of the buildings in the St Anne’s conservation area are listed. Mounting conventional camera housings on these buildings would have required planning permission but using dome housings only required listed building approval - a less arduous and much quicker process.

In addition, the aesthetic design of the domes was felt to be more in keeping with the architecture by council officials. The polycarbonate bases of the domes are clear so that passers-by can still see the cameras, helping to raise the awareness that there is a system in place.

“For this part of the installation we’ve used Videmec speed domes and they’ve been superb,” enthused Mr Walsh. “The picture quality that is received in the control room is exacting. You’re going to get problems with everything - on very rare occasions the weather can cause a problem sometimes when there’s rain on the dome but we can zoom through it.”

A police officer in the control room, able to talk to police officers on the ground, works superbly well. I always think that one surveillance camera is worth one pair of a police officer’s eyes

David Walsh

As the domes were chosen to blend in with the listed buildings the majority of the receivers are in the head of the dome. “We couldn’t have a lot of unsightly boxes all over the place, which you would have with the conventional housings,” said Mr Walsh.

Use of dome housings influenced the choice of lenses and for the first phase 18:120mm lenses were chosen because they are compact enough to fit in the dome housing. Future phases of the scheme will be a combination of domes and conventional camera housings.

Linking up

The cameras are monitored from a central control room, which is manned 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, via a BT RS1000 cable based transmission service. Another RS1000 link sends images direct to the police station in Bootle Street, giving police the ability to view any trouble spots or incidents directly. To avoid disruption, BT installed the cables at night and at weekends.

Two different types of camera have been used for the scheme, the FAC 830 HS model and the standard FAC 830. The HS model, on the building which houses the central monitoring station, is in a conventional housing and its use is being fine-tuned in the ‘light’ of experience.

“Generally speaking, as with most city centres, we’ve got good lighting. We use the model with frame integration on that building because we thought the light was just on the borderline. To be honest, I think that we’re approaching maximum integration on this camera at the moment and I would like a little less. As the lighting is generally a little bit better than we thought initially, we’re reducing the integration and the cameras will work wonderfully well.”

On the first night the cameras were operating an arrest was made, appropriately, in Police Street. The perpetrator was found guilty of attempted burglary and sentenced to two years probation.

Police support

The police have been very supportive of the scheme since its inception but, with only 19 cameras they initially found it difficult to justify having a permanent officer in the control room. David Walsh feels that such a presence could have doubled the number of arrests in the early days of the installation. “A police officer in the control room, able to talk to police officers on the ground, works superbly well,” he explained.

“I always think that one surveillance camera is worth one pair of a police officer’s eyes. A surveillance camera can only do what a police officer can do, that is look in one direction at any one time.

“The advantage that we have over police officers is the ability to zoom in for closer shots without exposing that officer to any danger. At a height of six metres up on the wall we’re safe and can at least call the police to send reinforcements, whereas one guy on his own can could be totally exposed.”

Future expansion

The control room has been designed to allow for further expansion of the scheme in future phases. David Walsh feels that the forthcoming 2002 Commonwealth Games will fuel some of that expansion.

“I’m quite sure that the central monitoring station will monitor the Commonwealth Games stadia and infrastructure, including the Metrolink transport facility. At the moment, without expanding the video wall in the control room we have the capability to put 96 cameras on that wall.

“We also have the capability to expand that video wall three times and actually treble the number of staff to do the necessary monitoring. The plettac VAZ allows us the capability to monitor 4096 inputs/cameras on one piece of control equipment and, if necessary, we have the room to expand it further with additional racks.”

Mr Walsh is adamant that it takes more than good equipment to arrive at a good security system, however. “It’s the whole operational set up that’s important - it’s not just about cameras, monitors or the control equipment - it’s the guys sat there monitoring. It’s the feedback and response that you get from the police.

University challenge

At about the same time that the Manchester city centre CCTV scheme was swinging into action, Manchester Metropolitan University was taking note of the advances in CCTV technology. The university has around 31,000 students based on seven sites - five in the Manchester area and two at Alsager and Crewe in Cheshire. The central Manchester campuses, with seven halls of residence, form part of the largest higher education precinct in the UK and one of the most extensive educational centres in Europe. With an overall student balance of 56% females and 44% males, security is taken very seriously by the university administration, particularly at the main All Saints campus in central Manchester, which is a very open public space. Principal building services engineer Mike O’Rourke explained: “Like all large cities there is a certain amount of crime that has to be dealt with. To meet our security needs we decided to install a CCTV system, costing £250,000, thanks to a grant of £100,000 from the Home Office.” After consultation with manufacturers and contractors, and a competitive tender exercise, Bradley Lomas Electrolok was appointed as main contractor to install 17 plettac FAC 830 HS/DT cameras. The cameras combine colour/mono switching when the operator requires and all of the cameras have a mixture of Ernitec 10:1 and 15:1 lenses. Mike O’Rourke described what he was expecting from the chosen system: “Camera technology has changed substantially in recent years. We were looking for a colour picture combined with low light performance and the option to switch to monochrome to get the extra low light capability needed. “We chose floodlighting in preference to IR options because we felt that floodlighting the area gave students a more secure feeling.” Some of the cameras are mounted on buildings, with the others on columns - and all are connected to reception desks at each building so operators can see the cameras local to them. The new cameras have been connected to the same matrix as other existing cameras on site and operators can configure the system so they can watch just one camera or all of the cameras at the same time.