A petition signed by thousands of people calling for live monitoring of CCTV will not be heard by the council because of a technicality.

Chris Brown started the campaign asking for the council to re-hire staff to monitor CCTV in real time, following a controversial decision to chop services back in 2016.

The petition had been signed by more than 2,200 people, and was due to be heard in July in the council chamber.

CCTV had become a major issue during the election, with Labour committing to reinstating CCTV in their manifesto.

Mr Brown has now been told that his petition, which was on Change.org, can not be debated because of the way data is saved.

Petitions heard by the council need to have included postcodes from those backing it, so the campaigner has been forced to start another petition - and is facing a race against time to get the signatures he needs.

MORE: Bexley CCTV: Petition for live monitoring reaches 1600​

He said: "I had to resubmit a new petition through the council's own website, again had to wait for this to be approved.

 "Unfortunately, it is not the easiest of petitions to sign due to the requirement to register an account first. Change.org made it very easy as it could be linked to your Facebook account data, however, it seems people are being put off by the requirement to register.

"It does feel like things have been made difficult for unnecessary reasons. I have therefore recreated the petition and it only takes ten seconds to sign. 

"Through the Change.org petition we received a total of 2,220 signatures and 20 pages of comments from those who signed. That's a lot of comments."

Bexley Labour had proposed reinvesting £250,000 in monitoring 225 cameras across the borough in a budget amendment that was defeated in March.

The council has previously stated that police can access the CCTV any time they need it, and that the council otherwise maintain it.

Cll Teresa O'Neill, the Leader of the council, said during the election: "We put our residents first in the long term interests of the borough and, when other boroughs switched off their CCTV systems, we worked with the police to ensure we maintained ours to keep our residents safe."

The new petition can be found here.

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Bexley Civic Centre

A spokesman for Bexley Council said the borough was one of the safest in London. 

The spokesman said: "Bexley is one of the safest places to live in London. Across our community residents, police and community safety teams work hard to keep crime low, and take action when it happens.

"The changes made to the borough’s CCTV in 2016 were in response to the major financial challenges we face, in common with local authorities across the country, which required us to save £56m by 2020 so that we are able to provide the best possible services to our Council Taxpayers. The changes followed consultation with residents and partners in 2015.

The requirements for petitions are set out in documents that are publicly available along with the contact details of officers who can provide assistance and advice on the process. The inclusion of addresses and postcodes of those supporting a petition is obligatory and this is clear in the requirements.

"The intention of the rules is to ensure that petitions reflect the interests and views of Bexley residents that have signed in support of any issue to be considered by Members.  

"The change.org petition your enquiry refers to appears to contain supporters from various locations outside of Bexley and in some cases outside of England.

"The requirements are detailed here".