WITHAM could be the first town of its size in the country to have a state-of-the-art CCTV system.

The town council, The Grove Shopping Centre and Industrial Watch are separately looking at developing their own security cameras, which will be linked to a monitoring station at The Grove.

Mayor Paul Heath said police had told him the joined up system had the potential to be more advanced than any other in a town the size of Witham and could sustain up to 64 cameras.

He said: "After all the problems we've had over the last few months with low level antisocial behaviour and real nuisance behaviour, this could give people a bit of confidence in the town and give traders a bit of confidence because they can see that we are looking to protect their customers and premises.

"And the system that we have seen is far superior to anything that I have seen before."

Witham Town Council agreed on Tuesday to contract Perspective CCTV to upgrade the council's ten existing analogue cameras to digital and install another three around the train station and Braintree Road.

Perspective will also set up and man the monitoring station, where footage will be watched regularly and monitored constantly between 6pm and 8am.

Witham Police Station will also have a direct link to the cameras and the council will consider installing further cameras in the future.

See next week's Witham and Braintree Times for full story