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Your front door is caught on camera
Town Hall photographs every house in the borough
THE Town Hall has been criticised for spending £100,000 on the painstaking task of taking pictures of every front door in Camden, amassing a huge photographic library of every home and street in the borough.
But the bizarre project, which officials claim makes their jobs easier because they can see the borough from their desks and do not have to leave the office as much for site visits, is already out of date.
The photos were taken two years ago and therefore do not include such major changes as the building of Haverstock School in Chalk Farm and the demolition of Lyndhurst Hall in Gospel Oak.
Even simple changes like the arrival of Tesco Express in Highgate High Street, Highgate village, are not charted in the photo library.
Dugald Gonsal, the Town Hall’s former chief engineer who still lives in Hampstead, said last night (Wednesday) that photographs could not replace actual site visits.
He said: “To do the job properly you have to walk the streets.
“You have to know the borough’s streets. You can’t just tell what is wrong from a picture. Things can change in two years.”
Mr Gonsal now runs a website exposing problems with Camden’s pavements, roads and street furniture.
He said: “You can see from the number of things on the website that not enough people are actually making site visits and seeing what the problems are.”
A council spokesman said last night (Wednesday) Camden had already begun “re-surveying” – effectively taking new photos to replace those that are now out of date.
The photo library has, however, been opened up to the public and posted on the council’s website under the My Camden section.
Individual addresses – from celebrity homes to council estates – can be searched. Results are displayed with a “360 degree panoramic photograph”.
Residents were not asked whether they wanted their homes included in the database.
The only clue that the operation was being carried out was a yellow van patrolling the streets as technicians gathered the photos.
The project has been up and running with hardly any publicity, although council logbooks show that one unnamed resident made an official enquiry about the point of the database and its cost.
Camden enlisted Dutch company Cyclomedia, more used to snapping wide-angled shots of towns and cities in Holland where the service is popular, to carry out the work.
The company was paid more than 150,000 Euros, about £100,000. Each update picture is charged at almost £10 each. Cyclomedia retains the copyright.
The deal was started by the previous Labour administration but the library has the support of Conservative councillor Mike Green, the Town Hall’s environment chief.
He said: “I wanted officials to be able to look at things online to save on the number of site visits. We can have a relatively small investment now and save years of actual man time in the future. This was one of the first things I said that I wanted to be done when I took over. It will save time.”
Cllr Greene said he had not been fully briefed on Cyclomedia but said if the service helped council engineers it should be welcomed.
A council official said yesterday (Wednesday) the Town Hall had already “re-surveyed” – updated photos – 20 per cent of the borough and hoped to hike that figure up to 60 per cent by the end of next year. |
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