CCTV tender queries

Londonderry City Centre manager Jim Roddy has told the Sentinel he has not been made aware of any allegations surrounding the stalled re-tender of the City Centre Initiative (CCI) CCTV operation and confirmed that no new contract to monitor the city’s public space cameras has been awarded.

Mr Roddy told the paper: “Firstly, we haven’t been made aware of any allegations and no contract for monitoring CCTV has been awarded. Nothing has been concluded.”

His comments follow a letter sent from NIAO Director Rodney Allen to Derry City Council Acting Town Clerk, John Meehan, on June 23, in which he stated that his office had been contacted “in connection with the award of a contract for the control and monitoring of CCTV cameras by CCI.”

Mr Allen advised he had discussed some of the concerns with the City Treasurer Joe Campbell but that an unnamed third party was “making serious allegations.”

The PSNI - a co-funder of CCI - has now confirmed to the Sentinel that it has received correspondence from the Audit Office in connection with the CCTV procurement process in Londonderry and that it will be reviewing the procurement processes involved in conjunction with Derry City Council as necessary.

Meanwhile, Sam Humphries the Chief Executive of Ulster Support Employment Ltd (USEL) - who alongside Wired Up Solutions raised questions about the tender process in the spring - has newly advised the Sentinel: “I think all we can say is that we recognised the process was outside our control, and while we were not afforded the opportunity to see the original tender documents we did seek advice and guidance as to whether or not the first process employed by CCI was correct to the relevant public sector procurement guidelines.

“The first procurement process was subsequently stopped by CCI, a matter on which we cannot comment, USEL are delivering the monitoring service as per our contract and we are content with that situation.”

In a Freedom of Information (FOI) release to the Sentinel six bullet points of “serious allegations” were redacted from a letter sent from NIAO Director Rodney Allen to Derry City Council in June.

Mr Allen wrote: “I understand that Derry City Council is a key funder of the CCI and I would therefore ask you to consider and investigate these matters and report back to this Office, including your conclusion on whether a proper public procurement process has been followed.”

Derry City Council, alongside the PSNI, is one of the core funders of CCI and late last year the local authority’s Development Committee agreed to a request from the City Centre manager for an increase in the yearly CCTV contribution from £75k to £77.5k.

In March Mr Roddy sent an email to Mr Meehan asking the Council to approve a re-tender of the CCTV contract which would see the current control centre shifted partly out of security fears, partly out of a desire to meet industry standards and partly out of an enhanced CCTV offering brought by the proposed new supplier.

He asked Derry City Council to commit to the same level of funding for the CCTV for the next three years “as in order to keep the price lower and make the move cost effective we need to, in principle agree with our new landlords that we will enter into a three year deal. We have agreed with our other funder, the PSNI.”

He argued that the current site which has been operating successfully for a decade was beginning to fall below the required standards for the monitoring of public space CCTV.

He explained how CCI had gone through a tendering process and “located a new monitoring station that meets all the requirements of BS 5979 and is available for immediate occupation.” The Sentinel asked the UK national authority on industry standards, the British Standards Institute (BSI), to explain the industry standard requirements for CCTV control centre operators.

In an official statement released to the Sentinel BSI said: “BS 7958 is the standard for the management and operation of CCTV systems and is aimed at the town centre council type CCTV schemes.

“Any CCTV system can be operate without any standards as long as it meets the requirements of the Data Protection Act as set down by the Information Commissioners Office.

“By meeting BS 7958 a CCTV control centre would show that it is operating professionally and also would aid the centre to meet its legal requirements.

“The requirements of a CCTV control centre operator should meet the requirements in BS 7958 not BS 5979.”

BSI explained: “The CCTV centre operator (RVRC Operator) would only meet BS 5979 if their CCTV centre were monitoring detector activated CCTV systems then the operator would meet the requirement of BS 8418 and BS 5979.”

“A detector activated CCTV system is activated by an event, the operator decides if the event is an incident (alarm) or not (alert). In an intruder alarm system the system decides if there is an ‘alarm’ (hazard) in the detector activated CCTV system the operator makes the decision,” the BSI also stated.

Back in June the Sentinel reported how current CCI CCTV operator USEL was seeking guidance on the review and re-tender of the CCI monitoring operation, which it appeared set to lose despite 10 years of delivery.

Now the Sentinel can reveal how another firm - Portstewart-based Wired Up Solutions - wrote to Derry City Council’s Acting Town Clerk John Meehan on April 19 with its concerns about the CCI tender.

A fortnight later Wired Up proprietor Cormac Hopkins wrote another email to the Town Clerk’s office having failed to receive a reply to his concerns.

He wrote: “I sent the email below on the 19 April but to date have received no reply can you please confirm that you have received the email and that you are looking into the matter, as we would like to have an answer to the question at the end of the letter.

“Summary: We understand that the current tender process is going ahead and that we are excluded. In light of our concerns is the tender process proper?”

There followed a flurry of internal Derry City Council communications involving the Town Clerk’s Office, the Council’s Temporary Senior Economic Development Officer Tony Monaghan, the Council’s Purchase and Payments Manager Colin Killeen and the CCI manager Jim Roddy.

On May 5 Mr Monaghan wrote to the Council Economic Development boss to say he had just returned from a meeting with Mr Roddy and Hugh Hegarty of CCI who had “outlined the process adopted and showed us the back-up documentation.”

“On this basis, and whilst their process does not necessarily fully align with that of Council’s procedures, we are satisfied that the process was conducted properly. Jim and Hugh intend to write to us by tomorrow to provide a detailed account of the process and rationale adopted,” he wrote.

The Sentinel has asked both Council and CCI for a detailed account of the process and rationale adopted and this back-up documentation but to date have not been provided with details of the mechanics of how the tender was conducted.

Mr Roddy sent two documents to Mr Monaghan on May 6, according to a Freedom of Information (FOI) release by Derry City Council. However, the documents have been redacted. One is entitled ‘CCI CCTV.doc.’ and the other is entitled ‘NSI Gold.doc.’

The National Security Inspectorate (NSI) was set up to raise standards in the security and fire industries in the interests of the customer according to its own literature.

Following some further internal Council communications a draft response was prepared for Mr Hopkins and Wired Up Solutions and although an email and hard copy letter were sent from the Town Clerk’s Office to an unknown (again redacted) party on May 27, we have been unable to identify whether this was an official Council response to the County Londonderry firm.

The Sentinel have learned that NIAO wants either Derry City Council or the PSNI to investigate the CCTV tender process.

Mr Allen told the paper it was “my understanding that an investigation is or will be undertaken by one or both of the main funders of the initiative and I expect this Office to receive a report in due course.”