Traders in Otley have welcomed the prospect of closed-circuit television surveillance in the town, seeing it as both a deterrent and method of detecting criminals.

Traders at Westgate, close to where recent street robberies have occurred, agreed that surveillance could help beat crime.

It has been suggested a mobile camera should be provided for the town so that it could be moved around to focus on trouble spots.

Trevor Backhouse, of Patisserie Viennoise, said: "It could improve the security of the town and there are certain blackspots. There is one round the corner from my shop that had at least one mugging happen there.

"I would like to see more police, but everybody says that all the time. The police say they can't have someone on every street corner all the time. I don't expect that, but I do think we should have more visible police presence on Fridays and Saturdays during the day and evening."

Peter Heald, of Lunds of Otley, said: "I would certainly be in favour of CCTV. I know the cost is fairly prohibitive on a full system, but I understand that a system is quite feasible with one or two cameras and I think we should certainly try something along those lines.''

Neville Harrison, of Toyland, said: "We have cameras in the shop and they are good as a certain amount of deterrent, but they're not a be-all and end-all. Otley certainly needs something, but, of course, it is very expensive."

Howard Hughes, whose workshop is in Milligans Yard, off Westgate, said: "I think it is a good idea. The only people who are going to complain are the robbers."

Graham Hardy, of Kensington Antiques, said: "I think it has been proved to be very successful and I think prevention is better than cure. I am a big believer in dummy cameras because you never know if they are filming or not.

"If you placed dummy cameras with real ones, you would never know which was which. That way you could cover the town for about a tenth of the cost."

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