WILTSHIRE Council's handling of changes to Salisbury CCTV was roundly criticised last night.

The council's plans to spend £500,000 on a new system but sack the staff monitoring the cameras came under fire at a meeting of Salisbury Area Board.

Councillor John Walsh said he was embarrassed by the "shambles", which area board chairman Brian Dalton described as "unprofessional" and a "dog's breakfast".

Richard Clewer said the changes had been "a long time coming", but admitted he was concerned by the speed at which they were happening.

Mary Douglas said she was "very unhappy" the area board had not been involved in discussions and said the key use of CCTV was to co-ordinate agencies on the ground, meaning it "must be monitored".

Salisbury Business Improvement District (BID) chairman Amanda Newbery said a community safety partnership including the police, councils, and businesses, was being formed to work out how to run the new system, which will combine trained, background-checked volunteers with paid supervisors.

She said, behind the scenes, operators were not just watching cameras, but also co-ordinating responses using radios and communicating with security staff and police on the ground.

"All day long we are working with shop lifting, preventing crime," she said.

"It's a really important reason why we are such a safe city.

"We are going to make sure we don't lose it, despite the cock-up."

City council leader Andrew Roberts again criticised Wiltshire Council's handling of the situation, saying there had been a "real policy failing" and lack of evidence before the decision was made.

Inspector David Minty described a recent case where a man who followed schoolgirls making obscene sexual remarks had been tracked by CCTV, caught, and banned from Salisbury.

After hearing Inspector Minty's account, Cllr Dalton said: "The system needs to be manned, professionally, by people that know what the hell they are doing."