PEMBROKE’S CCTV system viewing the area below the town’s castle to the Mill Pond is not worth the money spent on it, members of the town council heard.

At the March meeting, Councillor Mel Philips said recent work beautifying the area had been undone by vandals, with no chance of any prosecution from CCTV evidence.

“Councillor Cooke and myself worked very hard, down by the Henry VII statue, all the baskets have been planted with Spring flowers, but vandals came and hurled 22 of them in to the Mill Pond, where they just sank.”

Members heard that nine planter baskets, which cost £70 each, were ruined by the vandals.

Cllr Philips said CCTV images of the incident were unusable.

“The images are apparently indistinct.

“In our invoices the line rental is over £3,000 to maintain these cameras; they are old-fashioned and out of date; they don’t work and they need fibre-optics.

“All this work we done is for nothing, this is just a waste of money; I was so furious over this, we really work hard."

She warned Pembroke's Henry VII statue could be at risk.

“It also means that the statue is not guarded, anybody could spray-paint that statue if they wanted to; we are paying for nothing.”

Cllr Philips proposed senior police officers meet with the council to discuss the CCTV provision.

Councillor Jon Nutting described the CCTV footage as “useless,” adding: “They are not worth this sort of money, we should look at possibly putting our own cameras there.”

Councillor Keith Nicholas said: “This system is dead, basically; the systems today primarily work by broadband, and work perfectly. I propose that we, as a town council, get a couple of companies in to give us a quote.”

Members agreed to investigate alternative CCTV provision.