icomply are carrying out research into the effect of the UK recession and global economic downturn on the security industry.
The general consensus appears to be that as public and private spending decreases, there will be less revenue available for surveillance funding. Cuts, redundancies or even control room closures could occur.
But as crime tends to increase during economic hardship, others would argue that control rooms are needed now more than ever to tackle law-breaking and provide prosecution evidence. Instead of making cuts, control rooms could be investigating cost effective solutions whilst maintaining or increasing budgets.
At icomply, we decided to look into these theories and attempt to detail the precise effect of the economic downturn on control rooms.
We carried out a survey in March 2012 which revealed that whilst the vast majority (92%) of respondents were not increasing their control room budget in the financial year 2012-13, only 34% will be decreasing the budgets.
Of the respondents with decreasing budgets, just under half (44%) have slashed their budget by 30% or more.
Around half of respondents (49%) are looking for funding from the private sectors or other sources, with the majority looking for a 15% contribution.
The results suggest that most control rooms are maintaining their budgets and looking towards other options for revenue generating or cost cutting. On the other hand, where control rooms have a decreased budget, the cuts have been severe.
Hugh Barker, managing director at iComply said, “In our experience, control rooms are maintaining their legacy platforms in a cost effective manner. There has been significant capital investment in CCTV infrastructure so it doesn’t make sense to scrap it. But many are looking to an integrated approach to boost efficiency.”
In order to get a more detailed picture, we are carrying out a more detailed survey.
“We are trying to build a clear picture of how the economic crisis has affected the security industry. We’ve launched a new survey which will investigate not only control room budgets, but capital and revenue expenditure. The survey asks what difficulties the operators face, and what methods they use for generating revenue. We hope the results will provide useful information that can help the security industry to overcome challenges faced in this economic climate.”
So, is the security industry recession proof? Probably not, but this survey could go some way to helping the industry weather against the economic storm.
icomply are offering the chance to win an iPod Nano by completeting the survey on their website. Include your name and email to be entered into the prize draw, which will occur on 15th June.