Following a dramatic split vote at Monday night's (19th November) Finance and Policy Committee meeting, the CCTV issue is now to be decided by just four Monmouth town councillors.

The committee, whose request for more information about CCTV led to ill-informed comments on Facebook earlier this month, brought the issue back to the table this week, and after a long, well-mannered discussion, split their vote on the motion to recommend the re-entry to the CCTV partnership, leaving it to chairman Councillor Bob Hayward to use his casting vote.

Councillors nailed their colours to the mast with their comments for and against the issue, showing there is still a lot of caution about committing £22,500 of public money to such a venture.

Cllr Hayward opened the discussion by saying this was something that would affect the whole town and reminded them that there had been a large petition for it and councillors should make a careful unemotional response.

In response to questions from Cllr Malcolm Jones, Cllr Hayward admitted there were a lot of questions outstanding and councillors had only had ambiguous answers from the police and Andy Mason, the Monmouthshire County Council Project Officer for Anti-Social Behaviour and CCTV.

"We can ask these questions better from within the partnership, and if we do not get the answers we want, we should pull out altogether and leave it," he added.

For the full story, see this week's Beacon (21st November).