Monmouth Town Council voted on Monday (22nd October) to take further advice and get more information before committing themselves to a CCTV system for the town.

With seven out of nine councillors voting for the proposal, it risks putting any plans for CCTV back by 12 months because of the budget setting process.

A working party had been set up to look into the possibility of joining the present system whereby Caldicot, Abergavenny and Chepstow town councils have their cameras monitored by Blaenavon's Shared Resource Centre (SRC), a joint operations IT nerve centre for Torfaen and Monmouthshire councils and Gwent Police.

The annual charge on re-joining would be £12,800, and the cost of purchasing six dome cameras would have been £9,200.

The new system would work via a radio link, paid for by Monmouthshire County Council, thereby avoiding the previous charge quoted by BT of £6,000 to reconnect a system to the telephone lines.

But the proposal by Councillor Terry Ashton to recommend to full council that the town re-enters the CCTV partnership was not seconded and therefore dismissed.

The discussion prior to this had centred around the lack of information forthcoming from the police, who Cllr Anne Were claimed had said the crime rate was reducing, and questioned how the success of such a system could be evaluated in the future if this were so.

She continued by quoting from the national police website giving figures for the other towns presently signed up for the system, showing Monmouth to have the least reported crimes out of the four.

Cllr Anthea Dewhurst added that the council should ask for more time to look into the technology available.

"We need to have a system designed for our town, precisely for our needs," she said.

Cllr Dewhurst then proposed that the Finance and Policy Committee should recommend to Monmouth Town Council that they should take further advice and get more information before proceeding, a proposal seconded by Cllr Were.

This motion was passed by seven votes to two.