Ipswich City Council’s highly successful Safe City monitoring program is moving to a new home.
Health, Security and Community Safety Committee Chairperson Cr Sheila Ireland said the relocation to Council’s building at 143 Brisbane Street would happen quickly and efficiently, by the end of the year.
“The growth of the Safe City camera network in 1994 from 11 cameras in the CBD, to more than 300 cameras in over 12 suburbs at the current time, has had an enormous impact on public safety, crime prevention and addressing the perception of crime within the Ipswich community,” she said.
“The Safe City branch has grown to include a number of services beyond CCTV.
“The Safe City Monitoring Facility was originally located within the Ipswich City Square administration area, then later co-located with the Police Beat in the Mall.
“The current location is a secluded area with Mall access, where Safe City has operated for the past 12 years. As part of the demolition and redevelopment in the CBD, Safe City must relocate to new premises.”
Work had started with a completion date of 31 December. Safe City was expected to stay at this state-of-the-art facility for the next 10 years at least.
“The relocation of the current service will include new optical fibre from the existing area of connectivity to the new location. Analogue cables from the original CBD cameras will also be upgraded and relocated to the new area,” Cr Ireland said.
There would be a rolling transition of transferring cameras on to servers in the new building while keeping the Safe City camera network operational. This would involve taking 20 cameras offline at a time for a period of two hours, outside of peak time, until all 300 had been set up in the new facility.
The CCTV network had proved its worth over the years, picking up about 500 incidents a week.
Mayor Andrew Antoniolli said the Safe City program provided ongoing confidence for the community.
“This will continue the great work we have done and our excellent partnership with police,” he said.
