In case you didn’t already know this, most CCTV monitors are not looked at by anyone.

As cash-strapped police forces and councils around the UK are forced to tighten their belts in the recession, CCTV cameras around town centres are being left unmanned as they can’t afford to pay anyone to watch out for crime as it happens.

Instead, entire networks of surveillance cameras are being effectively put on auto-pilot, with police reviewing tapes only after a reported incident.

Now critics have called for a review of the future of CCTV surveillance which has cost taxpayers £500 million over the last decade, saying there is little point in having the cameras if no one is watching.

There was little point in having them to begin with.  They don’t prevent crime.  The only time they seemed of use was on a Friday or Saturday night to send the police to the latest drunken brawl.

But the move has angered police who say that it will be more difficult to detect and convict criminals without the support of the CCTV operators.

This is due to the fact that police will have to revert back to actually doing police work and solving crimes the old-fashioned, and hard, way.

Surveillance expert, Professor Nigel Gilbert, who last year produced a report for the Royal Academy of Engineers calling for a halt to CCTV cameras until their need was proven, said today that the situation had become farcical.

He said: ‘The evidence suggests surveillance cameras are completely useless as a way of reducing crime, their only use is as a way of collecting evidence a crime has been committed- it doesn’t stop it happening in the first place.

‘The public has been misled into believing that it’s a silver bullet for crime reduction and actually it is not.

The public was stupid enough to think that this would work.  Those of us who didn’t think that way, believed all along that they were useless during an incident and that they could only be somewhat helpful after a crime had occurred.  Unfortunately, the police rushed to the decision that these would solve all their problems and never looked at their usefulness.

The money should have been spent on real life officers who can actually do some work in the community and make things safer by his/her presence instead of a camera that can’t help anyone.