WESTHOUGHTON'S much-maligned CCTV cameras were down for 15 per cent of the time last year, it has emerged.

The cameras, paid for by the town council, were not working at time of an armed robbery at the Co-op store in Market Street in January last year.

This sparked a debate on the cameras' value for money, with Conservative councillor Phil Ashcroft requesting that the town clerk of Westhoughton Town Council detail how long the cameras were off for.

With each of the seven cameras providing 12 months of film, they were down for 13 of the possible 84 months of footage.

Cllr Ashcroft moved that the cameras were a waste of money and should be axed, as Horwich Town Council has already done, but he was outvoted.

Labour leader Cllr David Chadwick said the Conservatives' persistence in decrying the CCTV cameras showed that they "do not care about crime".

Cllr Ashcroft said: "Of the money paid, 15 per cent was wasted and of course I put forward a motion that the whole thing was a waste of money.

"I was of course voted out with me in a minority of 1!

"I voted against the counter proposal and challenged the council to produce better value next year with less than 15 per cent of £19,000 wasted.

"If anyone thinks that throwing away 15 per cent of any budget is "good value" then they are obviously spending other people's money."

Of the £19,000 committed to the town's CCTV cameras this year, £2,850 was wasted, according to Cllr Ashcroft.

The town council said that the camera capturing the Co-op store at the time of the armed robbery had been down for a month and not been repaired because "high winds" stopped engineers using a cherry picker.

It emerged that only the part-time town clerk had the power to sanction repairs and Cllr Ashcroft asked that leader Cllr Chadwick also have the power to be consulted on issues with the cameras in her absence.

But this was rejected in a report presented to members at a meeting on March 31.

On the latest proposal from the Conservatives, Cllr Chadwick said: "Little Lever actually would like to have something similar to Westhoughton, so we are very fortunate.

"This is an indication that the Tories do not care about crime.

"The police have told me that these cameras have assisted them with the prosecution of people doing a variety of things."