A new CCTV nerve centre has gone live - the centre piece of a major £1.7million upgrade of the camera system across Dudley borough.

Specially trained officers are capable of monitoring more than 100 cameras across the borough at the same time. The centre is also a planning hub during major emergencies and with live video and radio feeds directly into the police control room and officers on the ground.

Images into the control room can show highly detailed live footage of activities, to a range of hundreds of metres.

Months of work has gone into making the highly-secure control centre which adds to more than 100 cameras which have been upgraded in town centres and other key locations.

Councillor Laura Taylor, cabinet member responsible for community safety had a tour of the new facility and saw first-hand the state-of-the-art cameras in action. She said the investment in CCTV and control room, meant the borough was now safer than ever before. Cllr Taylor, cabinet member responsible for community safety, said:

"The control room is very impressive and the detailed images we can gather and analyse will be a huge help when working with police to catch and prosecute offenders. 

"Not only that, it will give people peace of mind when visiting our town centres, that they are safe and there is no place to hide for people breaking the law.

"All key locations are now live and we are looking at rolling out the upgrade to other areas, as well as creating a network of deployable cameras to target hot spots.

"The old CCTV system was outdated and prone to repeated failure. The new cameras are capable of capturing more detailed images and sharing with police quicker."