MORE staff are being employed to monitor CCTV cameras in Dorset during the daytime.

There has been a period when the cameras were not being looked at during some daylight hours, although they have been monitored at night.

Dorset councillors were told on Monday that two staff were now employed for daytime monitoring in the council’s control centre.

The council has been awarded £380,000 from the Home Office ‘safer streets’ programme which has paid, or will pay for, five additional CCTV cameras around Weymouth pool and the Marsh playing fields and five extra cameras on the Rodwell Trail, together with upgrades to other camera including those in  Weymouth town centre.

Cllr Robin Legg said there has been a recent debate at Sherborne about additional CCTV cameras for the town where one of the factors had been that they wouldn’t necessarily be monitored, so all that would be achieved was gathering information after an event.

He told councillors of a BBC South West TV report about a case in Exeter of young woman who had been abducted and murdered despite the city having 200 cameras: “If there isn’t someone monitoring them, they’re not much use,” Cllr Legg told the people, health and scrutiny committee.