COUNCIL chiefs look set to ignore a 1,000-strong petition to increase CCTV monitoring hours across the district.

The majority of Cotswold District Council’s conservative members snubbed a 1,000-signature petition handed into CDC offices calling for the council to increase monitoring times, which the authority halved from 112 hours a week to 56 hours in 2008.

Liberal Democrats backed the petition at the council meeting on Monday.

Cirencester town councillor and CDC member Deryck Nash said: "Cameras should be monitored in real time. I accept the present system is useful if an incident is used in evidence, but it doesn not help the elderly lady mugged at 11am for her handbag.

"If it was spotted on camera the police could get there quicker.

"We're not talking about professional monitoring, we believe Cirencester can support a volunteer scheme that happens in towns of similar size."

But Cirencester mayor Geoffrey Adams branded the Lib Dem campaign a "crackpot crusade to cause unnecessary anxiety" and said increasing the hours cameras are manned made no difference to the actual prevention of crime.

Cabinet crime and disorder reduction member Barry Gibbs said 24-hour staffing would mean a two per cent rise on everybody’s council tax bill.

He said just four percent of crimes committed within range of the cameras occurred outside of the normal monitoring hours.

But CDC Lib Dem leader Paul Hodgkinson said CCTV acted as a deterrent, reassuring the public and making them feel safer. He said a volunteer scheme should be reconsidered by CDC.

Independent member Cllr Peter Martin however said it was a matter for Cirencester Town Council, not CDC.

"If people feel they want more cameras manned in the town Cirencester Town Council should pay for them through the precept," he said.

He was backed by Peter Braidwood who said CDC should not ask the people of Tetbury or Moreton-in-Marsh to pay for increased CCTV monitoring in Cirencester.

CDC's cabinet will discuss the matter again and make a final decision at its January meeting.