Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has stepped in to help find a deal with Westminster that will see the central London authority maintain its current CCTV operations.
Westminster City Council’s cabinet has now agreed to decommission the authority’s current CCTV network of 75 cameras from 1 September 2016, unless financial support can be found.
Westminster has said it wants ‘to work towards a pan-London solution that is right for the capital as criminals don’t stop at borough borders’.
The fresh talks come after the authority failed to negotiate financial support from the previous mayor Boris Johnson, the police or local businesses.
Decommissioning would save £1m a year on running costs and potentially transfer the £1.7m earmarked to upgrade the entire system to other security uses.
A spokesperson for the mayor of London said: ‘The mayor's first priority is keeping Londoners safe and CCTV has an important role to play, especially in central London and the West End. The mayor has therefore raised this issue with Westminster City Council and the Met. While it is not possible for city hall and the police to assume responsibility for borough council CCTV, constructive talks are underway to find a solution.
‘Further CCTV is in operation across Westminster, including a network of private cameras and those operated by Transport for London and the Met, all of which are accessible to the police.’
Cllr Nickie Aiken, Westminster's cabinet member for public protection, said: ‘Like many other local authorities around the country, our current view is that we are not able to continue to subsidise this non statutory service when there are many other pressures on our budgets and where other partners are the main beneficiaries.
‘We will keep talking and in the past week have had very constructive discussions with the mayor, the Metropolitan Police and mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. We want to work towards a pan-London solution that is right for the capital as criminals don’t stop at borough borders.’
