It is probably with dismay that your readers learned that only one of four CCTV cameras in Danebury Avenue was working (WBN, November 16) when a shop customer was stabbed by a senseless criminal supported by two accomplices sitting in a car.

Your August 23 edition enabled readers to learn of the £54.5 million security plan to be installed at the Arndale Estate including lighting and CCTV cameras to limit crime.

The following week one of your articles highlighted the meeting of concerned Patmore Estate residents with the Metropolitan Commissioner of Police, Sir John Stephens, as the intention to install more CCTV cameras to limit crime.

Your edition of November 2 acquainted readers with the problem of increased crime in Tooting, following a murder, a 300-signature petition and a proposed package of improvements, at Thrale Road, among which is the upgrading of CCTV cameras to limit crime.

Despite the ceaseless demands made of central government for start-up costs of security systems including CCTV and the blanket condemnation of Wandsworth's three MPs for allegedly failing to secure additional government funding, we now learn of a control room manned only a few hours a week an unforgivable crime in itself.

It has fallen to the victim's girlfriend to express the common knowledge that everyone knows the cameras aren't working, if they were we would have had a good image of this man and a better chance of catching him'.

This shameful dereliction of responsibility, and liability, is compounded by the ever present council spokesman who stated the company which made the cameras had gone into liquidation, making it impossible to get new parts for the obsolete technology', then proceeding to we are hoping to get funding for new cameras in the near future'.

Readers aware of the company liquidation process will know that it is lengthy and, certainly, is of a sufficient duration to ensure the purchase of spare parts liquidators are always in possession of unsold stock.

One can only hope the existing anti-crime CCTV cameras are working and the control room is manned in as dedicated fashion as those making money from the motorists in bus lanes. Then perhaps the 48 per cent of crime reported in the WBN of November 9 will be reduced.

PAUL ALAN PETERS, Yelverton Road, Battersea

November 23, 2001 12:01