MACCLESFIELD’S Big Brother could soon be watching your front drive – but it will cost you.

In a recession-fighting bid, Cheshire East bosses plan to hire out the town hall’s high-tech CCTV network to homes and businesses. They believe the monitoring of private security cameras and alarms for a fee can raise up to £10million a year – to offset a drop in Government funding from 2010.

Finance chief, Councillor Frank Keegan, said the scheme – competing against private security companies – will be trialled within two years, along with a project to sell Cheshire East as an internet service provider (ISP).

"The idea is we would either be cheaper or offering a much better service for the same money (as the private sector)," Coun Keegan said.

"Lots of houses have CCTV cameras and we can link them up to our computer system, and alarms that go off could be monitored by the council control room. I think there will be a terrific demand for this."

But Coun Ainsley Arnold, leader of the Cheshire East Lib Dem group, said: "I would rather have people watching streets for fights than for shops.

"We should have CCTV covering children’s playgrounds before looking at opening up to private businesses.

"We were told that getting West Park linked in (to the network) was too expensive under MBC and I fought long and hard for that and will continue to do so."

Coun Keegan said: "We already provide broadband to schools and one of the big selling points is as a safety net for kids to go on the internet at home in the knowledge it would be on sites pre-approved by parents.

"We need extra income streams because I now know the Government won’t be giving us any more money, and I don’t want to put council tax up."

He said CCTV technology would also be upgraded so that recorded images could be used more easily as "prosecution quality pictures" in criminal cases.

Richard Aldridge, owner of Rich Sounds and Surveillance, a Macclesfield firm which installs and maintains security cameras, said: "You are still reliant on what a human being sees and they might not spot an intruder in the corner of the screen or become a bit complacent after a few false alarms."

There are currently 164 cameras monitoring Macclesfield, with 78 in the town centre.