Enfield Council teams up with First Capital Connect to announce unique partnership

Enfield Council has joined forces with train operator First Capital Connect to open a new Control Room within the Council’s state of the art Public Safety Centre.

The new facility at the Centre, which controls 162 cameras in Enfield and 61 cameras in neighbouring Waltham Forest, will now be connected to over 1,000 First Capital Connect CCTV cameras installed at 61 stations across its network. In addition to this, First Capital Connect is installing 61 help points, taking the total number of help points to 124 by September 2008.

Stations that will be connected to the centre include Luton Airport Parkway, Finsbury Park, St Albans, Bedford, Elephant and Castle and City Thameslink.

Built in 2003 to a high specification, the Enfield Public Safety Centre is owned and managed by Enfield Council, and all monitoring and enforcement is performed by highly trained Legion Security employees. The centre also houses Metropolitan police officers that are based on site full time.

The Centre also monitors all council owned community safety cameras in public places, including those on housing estates and internal CCTV cameras for the council’s housing services and carries out traffic enforcement on behalf of Transport for London.

The First Capital Connect cameras will be monitored by First Capital Connect personnel who will work closely with council employees on joint operations.

Cllr Ertan Hurer, Cabinet Member for Community Safety and the Voluntary Sector for Enfield Council said “This is the first time in London that a private company has teamed up with a council run CCTV centre to provide security coverage in this unique way.”

“It benefits us in that the extra income that comes in from this venture can be spent locally on improving CCTV coverage, and also is a bonus that local stations on the First Capital Connect route can now been surveyed both inside and out, to reduce crime.”

Elaine Holt, Managing Director at First Capital Connect said: “I am delighted that First Capital Connect is involved in such an innovative project.

“At First Capital Connect we are committed to the safety and security of all our customers and staff and have reduced crime by 15% and anti-social behaviour by 44%. We look forward to working with our partners from Enfield and the police at the new centre.”

This document was last updated on 2008-04-11 14:45:56 published by the Communications team. Document Reference:LBE_132695