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So, our Scout hut is hidden away of the back of an old 1950s housing estate. Not usually a problem, in use 4-5 nights a week and usually one day each weekend, only visitors and local dog walkers seemed to know it was there. Other than the public access to the adjoining playing field, the hut and it's car park are private property.
Since lockdown, seems the nearby houses have been reporting anti-social behaviour to the Police, but everyone forgot to actually tell us about it! Kids playing on the roof, yoofs meeting up to break lockdown restrictions, leave their McDonalds litter and apparently smoke - and deal - a little weed.
Our committee is Zooming next week to discuss options, as we want to prevent it getting worse as it looks like a few months before we will be back with proper, regular face to face meetings. The building is secure and has not been breached, doesn't look like they've tried yet. Between us we pop round to check on it 2-3 times a week. Potential issues if some idiot falls off the roof, obviously, and maybe £10k of (mainly old and well used) kit if they break into the stores.
So we are considering things like anti-vandal paint, and possibly CCTV to help identify at least car registrations if not individuals. Is it worth it? Will it deter people enough to justify the costs? Are the Police likely to take any notice? How do you set up and keep/review CCTV on a relatively isolated building?
Any advice and experience would be appreciated.
Give ‘Ton’ a ping, he’s your guy for this.
I set up a four camera system with a hard drive for less than £300.
Works fine, you’ll need Internet though to view remotely, or you’ll have to go back over the footage. You can set it to only record when there’s movement.
Maybe concentrate on beefing up the fencing first, cameras are really just a deterrent, if the kids don't care it won't stop them, unless something serious happens the police won't have resources to spare. Try and make the site less attractive to access and check your locks, make sure they work, identify any weak spots in the building that could give access.
Knowing who broke after the event is pretty cold comfort, even if they get caught it probably won't stop.
Lockdown does seem to have brought out the worst in teens, you nearly never see them in our village,, this summer though they've been out in large noisy groups, NO2 cylinders everywhere, banging on windows, lying down across the main road in the fog and dark! I know they're bored but everybody has suffered over the last 4 months.
Do you have mains power on site and router?
I'd say if they're playing on the roof you might struggle to mount cameras anywhere they couldn't be easily vandalised (I'm guessing they'd probably throw stones at them anyway).
My system is 2 x Hikvision 6mp PoE cameras to an NVR with a 4TB disk (enough for a couple of weeks with two cameras recording at 1440). The NVR has an Ethernet connection back to my router, I can then review footage either locally (mouse and monitor required), via a PC with a Hikvision app that connects to the NVR directly or via a phone/iPad via a Hikvision app that goes to a Hikvision backend and tunnels through to the NVR (via my Internet connection). If you don't have Internet access in the scout hut you'd probably just need to manually download footage to a USB stick plugged into the NVR. Not sure if you could set up a phone as a WiFi hotspot and have the NVR connect to it and then leave the phone there and be able to remote view it?
It works well but despite being decent cameras it's a struggle to read number plates unless the car is moving slowly or stationary, especially in nightvision mode - it only records at 30fps and skipping through footage a frame at a time doesn't really help as the detail is blurred.