Wirral's mobile 'eye in the sky' helping to keep people safe

A state-of-the-art vehicle acquired by Wirral’s Community Safety team is able to provide valuable, real-time CCTV monitoring and surveillance to various crime and anti-social behaviour hotspots to provide reassurance to residents.

The Community Reassurance (CCTV) van is fitted with six fixed cameras and one 360-degree camera on a mast that can reach more than three metres in height.

As it is mobile, the van can provide CCTV coverage in areas that might not be otherwise covered by static cameras and can relay live footage back to community safety officers based in the Emergency Control Centre (ECC) in Birkenhead.

The van was successfully deployed over this last weekend in support of the latest Operation Staysafe events taking place in areas of Wirral.

As it feeds footage into the integrated network of CCTV cameras monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the ECC, that also means its live feed can also be shared with the Merseyside Police Wide Area Network, allowing the footage to be accessed by police officers in their command and control centre under an information sharing agreement.

There are a range of situations that might be appropriate for the CCTV van to be deployed into. It can play a valuable role in multi-agency operations to prevent and detect crime and disorder and anti-social behaviour.

It could also be used to operations to tackle environmental crime, such as fly-tipping and dog fouling, or in situations where there are vulnerable children, young people or adults. It can even be a highly-visible presence providing community support and reassurance at large scale events in the borough.

Children from a primary school in Woodchurch have designed the artwork that now appears on a new vehicle that will be deployed in anti-social behaviour hotspots in Wirral to promote community safety.

Local schoolchildren from Woodchurch C of E Primary School took part in a competition to design the livery on the new, which was officially unveiled for the first time in December 2024.

It has been provided wholly thanks to external funding from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) awarded by central government and administered locally by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA).