CCTV repair and installation in Camden Town

Camden mixes flats above commercial units with terraces and yards, so the useful positions are different from a quiet residential road. Rear yards, fire exits, alley access and the front entrance are where we usually concentrate, and we allow for high footfall in front of the property.

For shops and rental properties we also make sure the recorder is somewhere secure and that footage can be exported quickly, because in Camden the request usually comes with a deadline from an insurer or the police.

Camden Town's stretch along the High Street, Parkway and the roads around the Lock combines shopfronts with flats above, narrow rear yards backing onto mews and service alleys, and terraced housing on the quieter streets off Camden Road. Bin storage is often kerbside or in a shared rear yard reached by an alley shared with several other properties, and footfall along the High Street and around the market runs late into the evening. Shop and flat entrances frequently sit right on the pavement with no set-back at all, so a camera has to cope with people passing within touching distance rather than at a comfortable distance.

Shopfront cameras on the High Street need a narrower field of view than a typical house camera, since a wide lens at pavement level mostly captures a blur of passing shoppers rather than anyone actually approaching the door. We angle shop-entrance cameras slightly downward and tighten the field of view to the doorway and immediate frontage, with a second, wider camera higher up if broader street coverage is also wanted. Cable for shop units usually runs through the ceiling void behind suspended tiles rather than externally, since High Street frontages are frequently listed or within the Camden Town conservation area and can't take visible trunking.

Rear yards and service alleys shared between several units are a common trouble spot, since fly-tipping, break-ins to bike stores and unauthorised bin use are all more frequent where several businesses or flats share one access route. A camera covering the alley mouth combined with one covering the individual unit's own back door gives a workable record without one business relying entirely on a neighbour's system. Where several tenants want to split costs on shared-alley coverage, a written agreement on who controls footage access avoids later disputes, similar to a freeholder arrangement in a converted house.

Flats above shops usually have a separate side or rear entrance reached by a shared passage, which is often the weakest point of the whole building since ground-floor shop security doesn't extend upstairs. We fit a dedicated camera at the flat entrance regardless of what the shop below has installed, wired back to a recorder inside the flat rather than shared with the commercial system, so residents keep independent control of their own footage and aren't dependent on the shop's system staying switched on.