'My daughter doesn't like coming out of her flat after tea time'

Erin is afraid of leaving her flat after dinner – due to a lack of CCTV in the apartment block where she lives in Aberdeen.

The situation has been made even worse by a series of recent disturbances, none of which have been caught on camera.

Erin’s mother, Michelle, told STV News the problem has got so bad that her daughter is living in fear.

“My daughter doesn’t like coming out after tea time, especially coming in and out the lifts,” she said.

“She just doesn’t know who’s going to be on the floor, if the lift opens at a certain level. Over the last year especially, things have got much, much worse.”

Michelle’s situation has led to calls for CCTV to be installed in all Aberdeen high rise developments.

Most blocks do have security cameras in place but some blocks don’t have any.

Fire crews were despatched on Sunday to extinguish a deliberate fire on the fourth floor of a block in the Hazlehead area of the city on Sunday afternoon.

The smell of smoke still lingers in the air inside the block and Marie, who has lived in the building for more than 30 years, fears incidents like this are becoming more frequent.

She said: “There’s been so many fires in the past. In the last two years we’ve had four bin fires. So you never know when the alarm’s going to go off and you just live in fear of the fire alarm.”

The city’s depute provost, councillor Jennifer Stewart, said Sunday’s fire makes the case for blanket CCTV coverage a “necessity”.

She said: “There’s a variety of issues and there’s been a clear degree of vandalism and I think it’s just about time that the council said ‘enough is enough’. I most certainly believe ‘enough is enough’ and we actually get CCTV in place.”

There are installation and cost challenges with CCTV in buildings where some of the flats are privately owned.

But residents say anything that makes them feel safer is an idea worth exploring.