CCTV and security installation

CCTV placement matters more than megapixels

Most disappointing CCTV systems were bought on resolution and installed on guesswork. A camera pointed across a wide car park records everybody and identifies nobody, because the useful pixels are spread across forty metres of tarmac. Getting a usable image means deciding, camera by camera, whether you want to monitor an area, detect that somebody is there, recognise a person you already know, or identify a stranger. Those are four different jobs needing four different fields of view.

In practice that means fewer cameras doing more specific things. A tight shot on the doorway at head height gives you a face. A wider camera above it gives you the context of what happened. Anything facing low winter sun off the sea will hand you a silhouette at exactly the hour that matters, so we look at where the light falls before we drill. Then comes the dull part, running cable properly and putting the recorder where an intruder will not find it.

Storage, retention and viewing it remotely

Retention is the setting nobody thinks about until they want footage from three weeks ago and find it overwritten. How long recordings last is a function of drive size, camera count, resolution, frame rate and whether the system records continuously or on motion. Decide what period you genuinely need, then size the storage for it, instead of accepting whatever the box was set to in the factory.

If your cameras see beyond your own boundary, or you are recording at a business, data protection duties apply and you become responsible for that footage, including handing it over when somebody asks for their own. Keep retention proportionate, put up signage, and do not point a camera into a neighbour's garden. Remote viewing on a phone is genuinely useful, and setting it up properly is part of what we fit across Lincolnshire, but the default password has to change and the app needs configuring.

Access control, alarms and realistic expectations

Access control earns its keep once keys have stopped working as a system. Fobs and codes are cancelled the day somebody leaves, doors can be timed to unlock for opening hours, and you get a record of who went through which door and when. On a building with fire doors on the escape route, the release arrangement must fail safe and satisfy the fire strategy, which is a detail worth settling at design stage and not at inspection.

Be realistic about what a camera does. They deter opportunists, they settle disputes, and they give the police something to work with. They do not stop a determined burglar, and footage of a hooded figure at night is often of little practical use. Layered with decent external lighting, an intruder alarm and locks that are up to the job, a camera system becomes one part of something that works. Sold alone, it is a recording of your own loss.