Perhaps CCTV isn't that useful after all

A curious tale of cost-cutting has emerged in the last few days as it seems Westminster City Council is planning to scrap its network of more than 100 CCTV cameras in the West End of London on the basis that it can no longer afford their upkeep due to government cuts.

This will come as a surprise to those who remember times at City Hall under the then unknighted Simon Milton when, along with Wandsworth, it prized itself as a wealthy (ahem, their reserves have recently been valued at over £22billion so they'll get through the week), successful council; a proud Conservative flag-bearer in a time when Labour ruled the roost nationally with ease. I remember, back in 2004, Kit Malthouse, now an MP but then a Westminster councillor and deputy leader, confidently revealing ambitions to cut council tax from its already low levels to zero ‘by 2012’. Needless to say this courageous aspiration was never realised.

And, when I worked as a reporter in the area in the earlier 2000s, Westminster Council was inordinately proud of the network. The manager of the CCTV control room was not only keen on inviting the press and other visitors to see how the operation worked, but he was also a frequent witness at council meetings and attended gatherings of organisations like the Leicester Square Association, reminding the locals how useful the CCTV was in improving their security.

But now, while other police and private cameras will remain, Westminster wants to switch theirs off, claiming it will save a £1million a year, a fairly paltry sum when they are looking for savings of more than £100million. A report on the matter concludes it is not the ‘most effective use’ of council money and the ‘operational benefit to the council is limited’; working hand in hand with the police, it seems, is so last decade.

A Soho resident I know wondered whether their safety was being put at risk by these cuts. After all, for years Westminster Council, the police and the government have been telling anyone who’d listen that the network was a success, acclaimed for cutting crime in the West End. Have they, in fact, all be telling porkies?

John Denham

In 2002, the Press Association reported how Home Office minister John Denham, was treated to a private viewing of footage - in the ‘£1.2million CCTV control room in the Trocadero Centre’ - of an incident in which eight youths launched an unprovoked attack on two men in Leicester Square. Other treats included a fist fight and a man urinating into a bin in Soho. Denham announced an extra £169,000 grant for three new cameras to the system and claimed that, while the CCTV centre had only been in operation for four months, 'it was already producing real results’. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Andy Trotter said ‘CCTV had been a great help in tackling late night incidents’.

In April 2003, Deputy Commissioner Ian Blair praised CCTV for helping to cut street crime in Westminster by 33 per cent

And in January, 2001, Westminster councillor Alan Bradley, who was then cabinet member for community protection at the council, wrote a letter to the council taking issue with a claim that CCTV does ‘not appear to make such difference anyway’. Councillor Bradley wrote: ‘We cannot quantify exactly how much difference it makes but we have seen a drop in street crime of 30 per cent in the West End in the past year. CCTV is one tool to help in the battle against crime and antisocial behaviour…. In Leicester Square for example, our CCTV was instrumental in the successful prosecution of seven youths who assaulted a tourist… the only comment I hear from people in Westminster about CCTV is to press for it to be extended to the streets where they work and live.’

In July 2004, Sound, the nightclub in Leicester Square, lost its licence after attacks on customers by bouncers were captured on CCTV. Superintendent Chris Bradford, from the Metropolitan Police’s clubs and vice unit, said: ‘The video footage showing the kickings given to customers were horrific.’

In April 2007, a man dubbed ‘Britain’s most prolific handbag thief’ was jailed for four years. Maurice Young, then 55, ‘was captured on CCTV at the scenes of the crimes’.

In September of the same year, the numbers of traffic wardens were cut in the West End by 20 per cent, with the council boasting that an expanded CCTV network could do the job more efficiently and save £1million a year.

Before the Olympics, in May 2012, the Evening Standard reported that police ‘swooped on Soho’s most wanted drug dealers in a pre-Olympics blitz on the street trade in heroin and crack cocaine’. Police identified a ‘hit list of 36 top-level suspects – amassing CCTV evidence and conducting test purchases’.

Camille Gordon

One crime CCTV didn't help solve, however, was the murder of Camille Gordon, who worked as a nightclub hostess at the Blue Bunny Club in Archer Street, Soho. This was a clip joint, a venue which enticed men in with the promise of a strip show and even sex for prices as low as £5. Once inside, normally in a basement, customers would suddenly find themselves with an astronomical bill of hundreds of pounds and threatened with beatings if they didn't pay. Sometimes, unfortunate customers would even be marched up to cash points and ordered to withdraw money by some knucklehead. The business plan of these clubs - which have mainly gone now - relied upon knowing that their victims were highly likely to be far too embarrassed to ever complain to the police.

On this particular occasion, on March 1, 2004, there was a dispute with a young black man who was facing a £375 bill after being in the club for about ten minutes. He left the club only to return and stab the 23-year-old Ms Gordon, who staggered down the stairs of the club before collapsing. Archer Street, at that time, had no CCTV cameras and the only footage that was obtained by cameras nearby displayed grainy pictures of a figure heading away who may or may not have been the killer. Despite a £20,000 reward being offered, her killer has not been captured.

There is, of course, no way of knowing whether CCTV would have led to the successful conviction of her killer but I remember police bemoaning the lack of decent footage and Westminster Council certainly wasn't saying CCTV was of 'little benefit' at the time.

The sanitisation of Soho

Walker's Court

Soho looks its best at night when it’s raining. The neon lights glisten with greater intensity; the corners become darker adding a hint of danger. Noise and laughter emanate from pubs; the flashy, drinkers, stragglers, queens and strays carouse through the narrow, low level streets, all hunting their next party. It can feel as though you are walking through a John Deakin photograph or witnessing a Julian McClaren-Ross story brought to life. Its romantic history becomes tangible; a rich legacy of immigration with bustling, vivid, delis and cafes, restaurants and bars, strip clubs and revue bars, basement clubs and drinking dens; all smells and steam and chatter and sweat, following the steps once walked by Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, George Melly, Nina Hamnett, Henrietta Mories, Muriel Belcher, Soho Pam, Jeffrey Bernard, Dylan Thomas.

But the square mile of sin, already a shadow of what it was even ten years ago, is in very real danger of losing even more of its historic saucy charm, of being sanitised out of existence and becoming much like any other district of London. At the end of last year, Westminster Council gave the go-ahead to let bulldozers roll in and flatten much of the block surrounding Walker's Court, perhaps the seediest little backstreet in London, but one close to the heart of Soho’s reputation as London’s red light district.

There are good aspects of the application; the lights of the Raymond Revue Bar will be restored and an ‘off-Broadway’ theatre would open. But in almost every respect the redevelopment is an example of arrogant philistinism, showing utter disregard for the area’s history, architecture and spirit - and people.

The new buildings from Rupert Street

In its wisdom, Westminster Council thinks removing the ‘sex-related uses’ around the streets outweighs the cultural and social harm of demolishing these buildings. Robert Davis, the deputy leader of the council, even went so far as to welcome the new building’s use of glass for its transparent quality. No secret sex, there, then.

After telling members of the English Collective of Prostitutes, protesting at the planning meeting, to be quiet as it’s 'not the way we do things here’, Mr Davis voted in favour of the plan.

He said: 

’The new designs are very exciting. They are very open and I like the idea of a lot of glass because it does allow a great transparency in the area. I’ve no problems with the height, the design or the demolition of the new buildings.’

The lack of architectural, cultural and historical knowledge on display is quite extraordinary - let alone the apparent glossing-over of what happens to the current denizens of the area. The idea that Walker's Court will become a ’transparent’ area with ’a lot of glass’ seems both perfunctory and inappropriate.

Permission was granted to the application despite failing planning guidelines in a number of ways. In their report, planning officers acknowledged the excess height of the proposed buildings, the failure to replace buildings of merit with anything worthy in the design of the new buildings and the lack of mix in the residential plans. Only the ultra-rich need apply, even for studio flats.

How Walker's Court will look

The council report describes many of the current buildings as lacking architectural merit, though it recognises the character of two unlisted blocks. One of the few great legacies of Paul Raymond is he did little to alter the fabric of Soho streets. Individual buildings themselves may not, strictly speaking, have ’architectural merit’, but collectively, the retention of a mainly seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century streetscape is of huge significance. Soho derives much of its character and vitality from its architecture and of, course, from the historic pattern of its warren of streets; the collective is of huge architectural significance. English Heritage acknowledged this but its objection to the scheme was overlooked.

The view of the new plan from Berwick Street

The green light to the plan has more intense, individual implications. Earlier this month, police raided brothels around the area, insisting this had nothing to do with emptying the buildings after the planning application was passed. Well, they would say that wouldn't they? One of curious aspects of Soho is the solidarity shown by local residents with the women who work in the brothels. Indeed, many of the more than 50 letters of objection to the redevelopment plan worried about the consequences of forcing these women on to the streets, where they are more at risk of violence and exploitation. Rupert Everett wrote movingly about this in The Observer on Sunday.

Elizabeth Valad

Take the case of Elizabeth Valad, for example. She worked in a Soho brothel, on Windmill Street according to a friend, but was forced on to the streets after Westminster Council ’enforced closure orders on premises used as brothels’. Tragically, she later became one of serial killer Anthony - the Camden Ripper - Hardy’s victims; her dismembered body found stuffed in bin bags, discarded in bins after Christmas, 2002, reportedly found by a homeless man in a cowboy hat. The implications for these women seems to be blithely ignored.

This isn't a plea for no renovation, redevelopment or refurbishment, much as shabby chic - at which Soho excels - is in. But developers and the council must show knowledge, sympathy, intelligence.

Soho has long posed a problem for such an officious organisation as Westminster Council. The area's determinedly relaxed individuality is a counterpoint to the council's ruthless desire for efficiency and squeezing as much as it can from the city, a geographically tight - but extraordinarily valuable - area. Paul Raymond certainly allowed aspects of Soho's fabric to decay, yet his resistance to redevelopment protected its character. But, despite at one stage being Britain's richest man, it doesn't appear his granddaughter Fawn James intends to follow his example. 

Postscript

There's a pertinent little passage by Piloti in this fortnight's Private Eye. While refereeing to Oxford, it remains relevant:

'To Oxford - and yet another example of the ineptitude of so many modern architects when having to deal with an older building.

'Faced with a problem, all they can do is introduce large sheets of glass. In fact, they almost seem to worship glass as they drivel on about "light" and "space". They do this partly because they have no understanding of historical languages of form and are uncomfortable handling traditional materials; but also because they fall for the delusion that glass is invisible. It isn't. It reflects, and it gets scratched and dirty.'