July 1999

Bradford TEC axed! (1 July )

CCTV doesn't work - official! (July 15)

CCTV doesn't work - official!

CCTV cameras don't reduce crime and don't make people feel safer, a major study confirms.

The study of Glasgows much hyped CCTV system was undertaken over a 2 year period for the Scottish Office by the country's leading CCTV expert, Prof Jason Ditton of Sheffield University.

The results match another study produced in Wales last week, and are set to undermine the governments recent announcement of a £170 million fund for more spy cameras.

Bradford Council are currently applying to the fund for a new 22 camera system in Bradford, including a high-tech control room buried under City Hall.

Prof. Ditton said: "What we have been able to show is that CCTV didn't reduce crime - if anything it has increased - and it didn't reduce fear of crime. If anything there was a slight increase in anxiety."

"The cameras were so vastly overhyped as a magic bullet cure for everything when they were introduced, that we were all blinded to the fact that this was a small addition in police terms, but a rather large incursion in civil liberty terms."

Prof. Ditton said he believed the "CCTV bubble was about to burst" and called for a moratorium on new CCTV systems.

See also: How the study was reported

See also feature: CCTV- Big Brother in Bradford

Bradford TEC axed!

Bradford Training & Enterprise Council, which has a long and dismal record of failings, is at last to be scrapped, along with the other 73 TECs around the country.

Government minister David Blunkett announced the decision yesterday to replace the TECs with around 50 regional "Learning & Skills Councils", covering all aspects of Education and Training for 16-19 year olds. An annual saving of £50 million is expected.

"The present system is bedevilled by what I describe as a Soviet-style wholesale distribution network where a contracting system results in people taking a cut at every stage before the learner gets the resources," Mr Blunkett said.

But the local Bradford newspaper, the T&A, began a campaign to save the agency. The T&A, which has a place on the TEC board, has received £85,000 a year in advertising and other revenues from the TEC.

Full story

See also: Who Runs Bradford - the secretive network of quangos and companies.

The government White paper: Learning to succeed

"Shooting the Messenger" - NVQ scandal.

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