POLICE officers and a team of volunteers recruited to monitor the city’s new CCTV cameras still cannot access the control room, four months after the system went live.

Installation of the modern, fibre-optic system worth £500,000 began in the summer, a year after Wiltshire pulled the plug on the old network.

The first cameras went online in August - with most now up and running - and some footage has been used by the police.

But officers still do not have full access to the control room at Bourne Hill, according to the city’ s police chief, Inspector Pete Sparrow.

It is because the system has still not been handed from Wiltshire to Salisbury City Council, a key part of the deal which means County Hall will not have to pay for its upkeep and running costs.

Wiltshire says this will happen “soon”, once “a couple of minor technical issues” have been resolved. Meanwhile the volunteers recruited to operate the system are also locked out and have been unable to begin their training.

City council leader Matthew Dean said they had all been vetted by the police and were “ready to go”.

“We will be ready to train them up the moment we get the keys,” he added.

The system was “largely operational”, he said, but there were some “software glitches” and a couple of the cameras were not working.

“I don’t want [Wiltshire Council] to give it to us before everything is sorted,” he said.`

Retired Salisbury Police sergeant Richard Goodman - the paid CCTV manager who will oversee the volunteers - does have access and has been supplying police with images on request.

Cllr Dean said Mr Goodman had the trust of the police which was “crucial” to the project’s success.

Inspector Sparrow said it was “tiresome” and “very frustrating” that the new network had taken so long to install.