THE BILL last week celebrated 25 years pounding the Sun Hill beat.

They’re still catching villains with remarkable regularity, helped these days by a forest of CCTV cameras which seem to cover every square inch of the fictitious borough of Canley.

They wouldn’t have the same success rate if they were up here in Darwen.

Back in January the town’s CCTV cameras were put out of action when an underground cable was sliced through during work on the site of the old health centre, in Union Street.

It wasn’t as though someone had pulled the plug on the Blackpool Illuminations. We only had five cameras in the town centre and three up by the shelters that pass for a railway station these days. But they were better than nothing.

As early as March, Roy Davies was “really disgusted; really angry”. Spring turned into summer. By early August there was good news. The CCTV system would be up and running “imminently”.

Councillors such as John Slater, Simon Huggill and Dave Hollings were ecstatic and were quoted at length in the Telegraph. Summer turned into autumn and now winter is closing in...

And the cameras still aren’t working properly. What’s going on? Everybody seems to have a finger in the pie, including the Primary Care Trust, Blackburn with Darwen Council, the Community Safety Partnership and the Chamber of Trade. Bob the Builder and Chippy’s Taxis might be putting in their two penn’orth.

Whose fault was it, and who’s going to pay for the repairs? It’s the usual story. And meanwhile we’ve had a killing on The Green, a machete and crowbar gang raid on the Lloyds TSB, in Duckworth Street, a safe raid at The Bridgewater where a sword was held to the manager’s throat, serious assaults and widespread criminal damage, thefts and attacks.

It’s been a sorry saga for more than nine months. Latest setback? The expensive integrated telemetry controllers were installed and then found not to be compatible with the system. These are the gubbins that give full control over a camera’s pan, tilt and zoom function. So, while the cameras are filming, their range is decidedly limited. In fact, they are pretty useless.

Other Lancashire towns have good working systems. Accrington and Chorley, for instance, are excellent, with dozens of cameras keeping an eye on their centres.

So will somebody get things moving in Darwen?