Soham Town Council will have to further increase its council tax precept to ensure the system can continue, meaning the cost will be passed on to tax payers.

Currently, Soham has seven CCTV cameras costing £2,066 each to monitor, which is shared between East Cambridgeshire Council and the town council.

But this will increase to £3,439 per camera for the next financial year – a rise of almost £10,000.

Town clerk David Giles said the precept would be at least £10,000 more than the current year because of the increase in CCTV charges, plus inflation.

He said on average, this would mean an extra £2 per household per year.
At a town council meeting on Monday, councillor Rosemary Aitchison said they had been intending to raise the precept by around five per cent but would now have to up that figure.

The issue was raised by councillor Tony Hinsley following a meeting between Soham CCTV steering group and Cambridge City Council, which monitors the network of 35 cameras in Soham and Ely.

During a debate on whether it was worth continuing with the system in Soham, town councillors agreed crime figures would increase if the town had no coverage.

"It is a very important issue," said Cllr Anne Pallett. "We do not want crime figures to go up."

Cllr Hinsley said other councils had discovered their crime rate had increased after scrapping CCTV.

"If we do away with it, our crime rate will go up phenomenally," he said. "I do not think it is optional but it is a decision which has to be made."

Members decided that Soham was not in a position to reduce the number of cameras it already had.

"To take cameras from that will make the whole system useless," added Cllr Hinsley.

"Ely has more flexibility which means they can take away some cameras but we cannot."

Council chairman Chris Palmer said members had been talking about having extra cameras, especially along Regal Lane.

He raised the issue of the town having more police officers on patrol instead but said they probably would not get as much coverage as with CCTV.

In a letter to East Cambridgeshire Council, Paul Necus, head of parking services at Cambridge City Council, said it was subsidising the services to some of its CCTV customers and, as a result, the service was operating at a substantial loss.

East Cambridgeshire Council is now looking into having another service provider monitor its CCTV network.

The authority has operated the 35 camera network in Ely and Soham since November 2002 and a CCTV Steering group regularly meets to oversee the scheme.