Sussex Police will be the first force in the country to have members of the public monitoring its CCTV.

Twelve independent, fully trained and vetted volunteers will visit each police CCTV monitoring centre in Sussex once a month to look at the usage of more than 400 council-owned cameras.

Currently, 400 cameras stream live to bases in Brighton and Haywards Heath and can be searched from police stations around the county.

There are 87 cameras in Brighton and Hove, not just centrally but in areas including Whitehawk, Moulsecoomb and Portslade.

The scheme is designed to “provide an effective independent oversight of the public place CCTV which is managed by Sussex Police”.

Dr Laurie Bush, chairman of Sussex Police Authority (SPA), said he hoped the scheme would help CCTV become more widely accepted.

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