Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Selby's CCTV control room is quite tricky to find - if you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd never find it. It's an anonymous building, tucked away on an industrial estate.

But thanks to the kit inside, Ian from Mayfair Security was outside the building waiting for me when I pulled up - his team had already clocked my Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ marked car as I'd made my way through Selby.

The control room itself is just as you'd imagine: a wall of screens amid a buzz of noise. The team have open communication with the police control room, as a result all of Mayfair Security's staff are police checked. They're trusted with sensitive information.

Watching from above...

But what's it like being paid to watch people? Ian's done the job for ten years and is convinced that CCTV makes town centres safer places:

"They're there to protect the public, innocent people. You get this Big Brother syndrome but as the saying goes, if you haven't got anything to hide then you've got nothing to worry about," said Ian.

CCTV cameras are criticised as an erosion of civil liberties. But companies like Mayfair to whom Selby District Council contract out their camera operations, are governed by rules designed to prevent unnecessary intrusion. Anyone who carries out surveillance of a public space needs to hold a licence awarded by the Security Industry Authority.

In addition to providing evidence when a crime is committed, Ian believes the work the CCTV control room team do is also preventative: "A lot of the time we can get police to an incident before a serious incident happens."

But it's not all crime and drunken behaviour, the Mayfair team also get to see urban wildlife.

"We've had anything from deers to badgers. We had one deer it decided to lie down just as a cat walked past and the cat attacked the deer. The deer just shot off," said Ian.

However, the other type of urban wildlife is more common: "The favourite one is when a cone suddenly becomes a trumpet and everybody walks down the street using them," admitted Ian.