YORK'S eye-in-the-sky CCTV system is set to go round the clock after senior city councillors voted in favour of live 24-hour monitoring.

At the moment, the system is watched between 9am and 9pm, with recordings made on some cameras outside those hours.

But non-stop viewing of the cameras is all set to go ahead after unanimous backing from City of York Council's Executive Member for Community Safety and Advisory Panel.

Peter Evely, the council's head of highway regulation, told yesterday's meeting how non-stop live monitoring of the cameras would mean police could react quickly to, and perhaps prevent, late-night incidents. The risk of violence, vandalism and other crime increased in the city centre after dark, when the CCTV was not being watched, he said.

Mr Evely also said revealed round-the-clock monitoring would be linked to a state-of-the-art CCTV system, which reacted to incidents happening in an area a camera was trained on.

He said: "Currently, to identify when an incident has taken place, after it has taken place, can take hours of viewing.

"The new system will enable us to put a 'mask' around a particular area of interest.

"At certain times of night, many city centre scenes do not change much. If one of those areas is masked and something changes in that area, the camera will react to that change."

Liberal Democrat leader Steve Galloway welcomed the 24-hour watching, and asked whether it could be extended to cover more outlying areas.

He said: "Some suburban shopping areas, for example, would no doubt benefit."

Coun Galloway then asked if the CCTV control room had spare capacity that could be sold to neighbouring authorities, helping to get best value for the local taxpayer.

Mr Evely said taking on more cameras was possible, and pointed to the council's partnership with York District Hospital on the monitoring of its Accident and Emergency Department's cameras.

"We are also negotiating a fee with the police to monitor their cameras if we go into 24-hour mode," he said.

The meeting was told the extended hours would cost an extra £50,000, costs which would be met by the

police and hospital fees, and from money saved in changes in management of street lighting. Councillors also heard how a consultation exercise is to be held across the city on a new CCTV code of practice. Mr Evely said the old code was out of date, and the new one was already in place as an interim measure.

Updated: 11:39 Thursday, November 21, 2002