CLOSED circuit television surveillance at Clifton Moor, an idea that withered in a blast of apathy last year, is firmly back on the agenda.

Urgent discussions have taken place between the Clifton Moor Business Association, the police and the City of York Council.

The result is that all have agreed to form a partnership to equip the crime-hit estate with a network of cameras linked in to security firm, Britsafe.

And Anne McIntosh, MP for the Vale of York, has put her weight behind a bid for the Government's £1 million challenge fund to install the network.

Spur to renewed action was a £15,000 rampage of destruction by vandals across the estate on two nights just before Christmas.

A pilot experiment to monitor eight of the firms there with CCTV cameras was abandoned last September when just three of the eight agreed to support it.

Yet the estate's crime bill was been running at around £1 million a year.

Bill Heath, chairman of the Clifton Moor Association which has 200 members, is also a member of the York Business Alliance Against Crime. He said: "We are still discussing the funding, but we are hoping to have cameras in place by March."

Meanwhile, Warner Brothers Cinema management could not wait and plans to install its own CCTV in its car park.

Even the cinema's own security men could not prevent gangs of thieves stealing high performance vehicles from the car park for sale in Leeds.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.