COMMERCIAL CCTV

It depends on the areas you want to observe. Some CCTV installations choose to not cover the whole property but, instead, focus on key areas where traffic is coming in and out. Our team at Green Light Electrical is happy to carry out a site visit to give you their best advice about what would be right for your location and your needs.

Yes. By law, you don’t only need to make your staff aware of it, you also need to display clear signs so that members of the public, as well as your staff, are aware that CCTV is recording the area and why. You need to include your company name and contact details on these signs. You also need to have a data controller who is responsible for the footage that is captured.

No, you can’t. There are special circumstances where it is allowed, for example in police interview rooms, but the options for recording audio with CCTV are really limited because you’re breaching privacy laws by recording a conversation that you’re not part of.

It depends on the insurance company, but most insurance companies look favourably on CCTV being active. However, if you do tell your insurance company that you have CCTV and this has influenced your premium, you must keep your CCTV maintained in full working order. If not, it could cause issues if you make a claim and it’s found that the CCTV wasn’t working properly.

Your first priority is to register your CCTV with the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office). This is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest. There are steep fines if you don’t register. The annual fee starts at £35 for a small business but the amount your business will need to pay depends on your company’s size and profits. 

You also need to make sure that you are managing the data that you are collecting. In theory, if a member of the public says they walked past one of your cameras on a certain street at a certain time, and asks to see any footage of them and requests that you delete it, you need to have the facility to be able to do so.

We’re all aware of the obvious ways CCTV protects a property by capturing footage that you could forward on to the police. However, you can also use it to trigger outputs. For example, you can get it to turn on lights or to raise an alarm. You can also use it to push notifications to your phone so it can actually alert a security centre or people on site that someone is breaching your premises.

It depends on the type of business, as there are lots of different features available that cover more than just the security side. It can also be a useful business asset and become part of your efficient operations. For example, we’ve recently completed an installation at a campsite that incorporated an ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) camera. Not only does the ANPR camera operate their site’s barriers, but it also links with their booking system online so that, every time someone books a pitch to stay there, their number plate is inputted so that they can gain access automatically. This also gives the business a comprehensive paper trail of which vehicles have been in and out of the campsite.

Running a CCTV system is low maintenance. There are three main areas that really need to be checked frequently. 1) Accessing the playback. 2) Establishing that there are no issues with the hard drive, which could mean looking back at old footage. 3) Making sure that the cameras are clean and free from obstructions that would affect visibility. Something that doesn’t show up when you’re looking at the camera during the day can be really highlighted by the infra-red light at night, for example cobwebs can completely distort a whole image at night, even if the same image is perfectly fine during the day.

Typically, you will have a screen somewhere in an office that will be recording all the time. You can set it up to be viewed remotely on your mobile devices from anywhere. It can also be set up to be monitored from a head office. So, if you are a larger company, you can have a server running that enables you to view multiple sites from one place.

Our expert team at Green Light Electrical can help you to choose the right system for you. We’ll visit your premises to survey the area, discuss your needs and your options. There is a varied range of cameras to suit different needs, for example you can use cameras for temperature screening, or thermal imaging to enable you to focus on hotspots, and you can also have heat tracking using a fisheye camera. This is typically used in a shop and usefully enables you to track the high traffic areas and see which product lines are getting the most attention. You can also get cameras with features for ANPR and facial recognition.

You have a wide range of options. We can programme the equipment to trigger outputs – anything from lights, gates, alarms and sounders to voice recordings. For example, if anyone walked over a certain line it could say “Warning! You are entering a security-protected area.” But, really, it’s limitless. Whatever you’re thinking of, we can probably make it happen.

As there are so many options available, it comes down to what you need the system to do for you. If you just need to keep your site secure, we can work to a lower budget. If you’re looking to utilise additional features to benefit your business, it will cost more. Get in touch with us at Green Light Electrical to arrange a site visit so that we can talk through your options and give you a full quote.