LYME Regis Town Council has agreed to join Dorset Council’s CCTV Project, although not all councillors were in favour of surveillance cameras around the town.

Councillors discussed the project at a recent meeting of the town management and highways committee, which allows Dorset Police to monitor the CCTV footage from a council’s own CCTV cameras, over the internet, at the police CCTV operations centre.

There would be no on-going cost for the council, but it would have to pay for the cameras and installation.

Cllr Jeff Scowen said that joining Dorset Police’s initiative for monitoring the CCTV was a ‘no brainer’ but he wanted CCTV to be available in Broad Street.

Mayor of Lyme Regis, Cllr Michaela Ellis, called to have Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras installed in the town.

She said: “We need that vehicle registration monitoring because when there is an event in town, if that could be picked up, think how much police time could be saved and that would mean more police on the ground in the town rather than running around trying to find these problems out.

“I think it is really important that we get it and we get it quickly.”

Cllr Scowen agreed that once CCTV was complete in the town, they should look at ANPR as well.

However, Cllr Richard Doney objected to more CCTV in the town and said he was ‘very strongly against it’.

“I understand why people think it is helpful but there is a much bigger issue here and that is the whole study of the public by authorities. This country must be in the top five in terms of CCTV in the world and I strongly object to it.

“Evidential CCTV is very different from just looking at public areas because that sort of thing is not good enough for evidential purposes.

“I can’t convince myself there is any benefit. What it is doing is increasing surveillance of the public and I don’t think it is fair.”

Cllr John Broom, chairman of the committee, said that additional CCTV ‘doesn’t matter’ if you’re not doing anything wrong, to which Cllr Doney replied: “That is a nonsense, cheap argument”.

Cllr Brian Larcombe expressed concern that he would much rather see police officers ‘doing the rounds’ than watching screens ‘waiting for an image’.

Cllr Scowen said: “I understand Richard’s concerns about prying into people’s lives, however, our first duty is to protect the public and I am afraid that any consideration such as those, valid as they may be, don’t hold sway in this situation.

“I don’t see anything wrong and I think it is our duty to put them up and so as much as we can to protect the people who live here and visit us.”

The motion was passed to join the Dorset Council’s CCTV Project and to look at installing CCTV in Broad Street.