A TOWN council has been approached by Cumbria Police over the prospect of installing new CCTV cameras.

Brampton parish council has been contacted by Cumbria Constabulary to discuss the possibility that closed

circuit television cameras could be installed in the town centre.

The police force currently operates 53 CCTV cameras across the county.

Fifteen of these cameras are located in Carlisle, the vast majority being found in the city centre’s shopping and nightlife areas.

Three CCTV cameras operated by the police are also located in Penrith.

However, there is scope within Cumbria Police’s CCTV scheme to extend the current number of cameras up to 80 across the county.

Brampton town centre is now being considered as one of the possible locations for extending the scheme.

The town’s parish council chairman, David Moorat, was positive about the prospect of police CCTV being installed in Brampton.

“It is a good idea, subject to all the costs being fully accounted for,” he said at last week’s meeting of the parish council.

Recording high definition images 24 hours a day, all year round, the CCTV images captured by Cumbria Police’s cameras are stored for a

rolling period of up 30 days, then deleted unless required for criminal investigations.

Also continually streamed to Cumbria Police’s headquarters, the CCTV cameras are used by the force to provide real-time information about any ongoing incidents, as well as in investigations into any criminal activity or anti-social behaviour.

Cumbria Police’s current CCTV setup has already proven itself to be an effective crimefighting tool.

In June 2018, 436 incidents in total were ‘tagged’ by the CCTV cameras.

This was a sharp increase on 235 incidents recorded in the same month in 2017.