Anti-crime TV is officially casting its watchful eyes over the residents of Borehamwood.

The 14 closed circuit television cameras are now up and running in the town 24 hours a day.

Already the £300,000 initiative has been hailed a success with 31 incidents being logged at Barnet and Hertsmere police division since the first few cameras went up last month. And that was only with the control room being operated at night.

Now that the town has 24-hour surveillance, police hope crime rates will fall further.

"Already crime reported in the Borehamwood area has fallen by about ten per cent in comparison with the previous two months," said Chief Inspector Richard Testar. "It's too early to to say if this is a direct result of CCTV, and it's also difficult to measure the feel safe factor of residents. However there is now a clear message to offenders that they will be seen committing offences and arrested."

Philip Winter, special projects manager at Hertsmere Borough Council organised the initiative. He said: "We are very pleased and excited about this and glad that we finally received enough funding. The Home Office gave £108,000 towards it, local businesses gave £10,000 and Ridgehill Housing Association put up £70,000.

"The rest came from us and it's just great to see it working. The main costs were in setting up, now we only need to pay running costs and operators' wages."

The six Borehamwood locations of the cameras are Shenley Road, the flats in Manor Way, the Civic Offices Car Park, Meadow Park, Canterbury House, Paxton Court and Aberford Park.

The control room, which is based at Elstree Film Studios in Shenley Road, Borehamwood, is linked directly to Barnet police station. Operators only need to pick up a phone and they are through to the station which has its own screens.

In cases of emergency police operators can take control of the equipment and view parts of the town they need to. The cameras also mean that if a minor incident is seen by operators the police can make retrospective arrests using evidence recorded on video tapes, attend serious crimes promptly and therefore use their resources more efficiently.

Philip Copland, chief executive of Hertsmere Borough Council, said: "The people of Borehamwood expected the council to come up with something to make them feel safer and I believe that our CCTV is now going to do just that."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.