THE deal announced last night to save Worcester’s CCTV monitoring system is, on the face of it, good news. We revealed exclusively on Tuesday that city councillors had struck a deal with their counterparts in Wychavon to safeguard monitoring of the network of cameras.

Now the councils have unveiled the full details of the agreement. While we welcome the news that Worcester’s cameras will continue to be monitored, the deal poses as many questions as it answers.

Regular readers will remember the city council planned to end monitoring of the CCTV system to save £140,000 a year as it bids to find £4.5 million of savings over the next few years.

The proposal would have meant the cameras would still be operational but the civilians who monitor the system at Worcester police station would lose their jobs.

This newspaper, local MP Mike Foster and the city’s former police chief Rod Reynolds led the protests against the plans.

Now the current system will remain in place until next autumn when the monitoring will be transferred to Wychavon’s council headquarters in Pershore.

While ensuring someone will be watching the city’s CCTV pictures is welcome news we also need some guarantees about the people who will be doing the monitoring.

Will they be the excellent, knowledgeable, experienced staff currently employed at the police station? If not, will their replacements be properly trained? Will they have the intimate local knowledge that is vital to this role?

We are delighted the monitoring has been saved, as an unmanned CCTV system would be effectively useless.

But we remain to be convinced this is more than a cheap alternative conjured up to appease dissenting voices.