Wireless CCTV Solutions for Local Authorities: Enabling Effective Community Safeguards

Local authorities and the Environment Agency both have a responsibility in respect of illegally deposited waste with certain obligations set out in the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Local authorities have a duty to clear fly-tipped material from relevant land in their areas and consequently they deal with the vast majority of fly-tipping on public land, investigating these and carrying out a range of enforcement actions.

Despite the increasing tightening of budgets and services, authorities are being asked to do more with less. Videosoft has focused solutions for the real-life problems that concern your residents the most. Fly-tipping is something that, unfortunately, is rife across the entire country. Landowners have the power to fine or prosecute offenders for illegally dumping waste on their land. The problem is proving who is responsible.

A quick response is key to keeping an area rubbish-free – because unfortunately, rubbish attracts more rubbish. An authority taking no action or slow to respond to the issue will find itself with dumping grounds on its hands. Videosoft can help improve the efficiency of existing service provision through the reduction of staffing and providing internal and external income streams. Our goal isn’t to replace staff with devices but to improve the efficiency of existing service levels and provide more effective outcomes and offset the service budget with income.

The traditional solution is to target an area with a camera in the hope that the camera will deter or detect the suspects. While this is possibly better than doing nothing, it still relies on human intervention.

An example would be a resident who gets fed up with seeing the dumped mattress outside their house for a week and rings to complain; the camera footage is reviewed to see if anything of use is captured. Hopefully, there is something of use, but by this time it will be at least a week old, and the resident is now complaining that other people have added to the initial dump.

A system that provides alerts as soon as a fly-tip has happened would solve the problem. The Videosoft system is smart. It will monitor activity and is clever enough to know when someone dumps anything in the camera’s view. As soon as our system “sees” the fly-tip it can take various forms of action. These could be emails or text messages or alerts to the control room. Arriving directly into the inbox allows the service team and their manager to investigate potential fly-tips immediately. In addition to allowing the investigation to begin sooner, the tip can be cleared faster. It also increases the likelihood of the offender being identified and the risk of additional items getting added to the dump over the following days.