Vandals run wild whilst Town Council stalls on CCTV

A few months ago in Westhoughton, we suffered a spate of vandalism and theft of items from cars parked in our town center car parks. These events brought to light the dire lack of CCTV camera coverage in our town and many residents were rightly concerned about the safety of their cars, valuables, and themselves when navigating the town in the weeks during and after the attacks.

With these attacks bringing to light the lack of CCTV coverage, I attended a meeting of Westhoughton Town Council where I asked the council to "urgently look into the current CCTV provision for the town with a move to invest council monies into not only purchasing new cameras but to

upgrade the system as a whole". I was informed by the leader of the council (Cllr Wilkinson) that he intended to take all Cllr's up to Middlebrook retail park to view the current CCTV system, and that progress would then be made from there.

Unfortunately, months down the line there has been no update on any progress being made in regards to upgrading and adding to Westhoughton's CCTV system. At a recent council meeting on Monday 12th June 2023, I put the issue regarding CCTV on the agenda. The ruling party (Liberal Democrats) stated that "this question has already been answered in a previous meeting", they provided no update whatsoever on any progress being made or any plans being put into place.

The town council is not fit for purpose and isn’t delivering for the residents of Westhoughton, whether that is in regards to CCTV or in regards to providing activities for kids during school holidays.