A NEW CCTV system covering more than 50 locations in towns across Blaenau Gwent has been hit by a number of “technical” issues since coming into operation, resulting in several incidents where requested footage has been unavailable.

Power supply problems, internet failures, vandalism and bad weather have affected the system.

The county borough council ended an agreement with Newport council, which provided a 24/7 monitored system, switching to a newer, cheaper “record only” scheme - where evidence is retrieved at a later date - at the end of 2018.

Footage is available for download at the request of authorised agencies, such as Gwent Police, via an unmanned control room, with no ‘live’ feeds being monitored.

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A council report says the new system has been “actively providing high quality digital imagery” to organisations such as the police.

But technical issues including the security and stability of low voltage power supplies, wireless interference, disruption to broadband lines, vandalism, bad weather, and premature failure of equipment have caused problems.

“The issues may continue into the foreseeable future, however Technical Services will be implementing procedures to regularly monitor the system status, and undertaking remedial works,” a council report says.

“The result of these issues has been and may continue to be that the transmission and recording of images has been and maybe interrupted at some periods.

“As a consequence of these issues, Technical Services and the contractor continue to liaise to ensure that the system is operating effectively.”

The council received 42 requests for CCTV footage from July 30 2019, to January 15 this year, including 26 from Gwent Police in relation to the prevention and detection of crime.

Four requests for CCTV have been made by insurance companies in relation to crashes, eight from residents and four from councillors.

Footage has been shared with the police 16 times for incidents including serious violence and disorder, burglary, criminal damage, drink-driving and traffic incidents.

On four occasions, footage was not available “because of operational issues with cameras or [the] system,” a council report says.

Some of the other incidents were outside the view of cameras so no footage was captured.

Problems were also highlighted with the previous ‘outdated’ CCTV system in the borough, with just 27 cameras functional out of 63, and none working in Ebbw Vale, Brynmawr, Blaina or Cwm.

The current system includes 53 CCTV cameras across seven areas, covering Ebbw Vale, Abertillery, Brynmawr, Tredegar, Cwm, Blaina and Llanhilleth railway station.