CCTV cameras across Colchester town centre have helped police to snare 113 criminals in eight months, new figures have revealed.

There are 130 council-owned cameras covering the streets across the town centre. They are based across 13 locations and monitored by a specialist team from a central location.

The latest figures are from Colchester Commercial Holdings Ltd - Colchester Council’s commercial firm. It shows in the year to date the CCTV has assisted in 113 arrests out of a reported 1,827 incidents.

During 2018/19 the team recorded 4,242 incidents, of which 188 resulted in arrests.

In July, eagle-eyed CCTV operators noticed a break-in at Nicholas Jewellers in Colchester High Street in the early hours.

They alerted the police and Phillip Spicer was arrested at the scene.

At court he was jailed for a total of 24 weeks for the burglary and for committing the offence while subject of a community order.

Colchester Council is in the process of upgrading the CCTV cameras and coverage across the town.

A report, set to go before the council’s scrutiny committee, said discussions were taking place with telecare providers and BT to update the analogue system to digital. Digital CCTV images often lead to higher quality pictures.

Funding of £3.45 million has been secured from the Department for Culture, Media, Sport and Digital as part of the Government’s Local Full Fibre Network Fund.

Part of the cash will see existing CCTV cameras converted into multi-purpose distribution nodes providing ultrafast broadband, digital CCTV, radio deployments and 5G transmitters.

A spokesman for Colchester Council said: “Planning the upgrade works for a new digital CCTV system is progressing well and will be closely integrated with the forthcoming launch of the council’s full fibre network programme.

“The new infrastructure to be built under this programme will deliver a completely new fibre infrastructure for both ultrafast broadband and state-of-the-art digital CCTV.”

CCTV will also be introduced at North Station as part of the £200,000 Fixing the Link project.

However the work has yet to begin nearly 12 months on from when it was announced.