PLANS to put a stop to anti-social behaviour at Brunel Quay car park by investing in an £11,000 CCTV system for the area are back on track, after a meeting on Monday.

At a special meeting of Neyland Town Council, members agreed to ‘approve, in retrospect, the suspension of Financial Regulations during the discussion on the quote for the CCTV system on May 11’ – enabling them to proceed as planned with the purchase from local security firm OCON.

The vote followed concerns raised by Cllr Mike Harry that a previous decision to spend around half of the council’s reserves on the four-camera system was against the authority’s own rules.

Cllr Harry had said that, in order to ensure ‘best value for money’ for the people of Neyland, the council should have obtained three quotes for the work, instead of one.

Although he did not have a specific issue with the quote provided by OCON, Cllr Harry said he was not satisfied that the council needed everything they had agreed to buy.

“It’s not the price that’s the problem; we haven’t had proof that this level of surveillance is needed,” he said.

But the town clerk had said the move was within the rules, but financial regulations should have been formally suspended first.

The Brunel Quay area has been known as a trouble hot-spot for some time, with concerns about ‘boy racers’, and the impact on local residents, going back many years.

Police were given special powers to ‘move on’ trouble makers’ in October last year, in form of Section 30 dispersal orders, but their limited scope meant they were difficult to enforce.

These powers expired in April, and police now hope the combination of round-the-clock CCTV coverage, combined with powers to seize the vehicles of repeat offenders, will help combat the problem.