COWLEY Road, Oxford, will get CCTV coverage.

Arguments about installing cameras on Cowley Road look set to come to an end after the working group formed to look into the issue recommended four wireless cameras be put in place for a trial period of a year.

Supt Brendan O'Dowda, who has campaigned for CCTV cameras, was delighted by the decision - which will go on to be ratified by Oxford City Council's east area comittee.

He said: "It is a compromise but I think it is the way forward.

"Four cameras is a great start. The beauty of wireless cameras is we have the flexibility to move them should we need to."

The cameras will cost around £48,000, plus installation, and Oxford University, Oxford Brookes University and venues on Cowley Road will be asked to contribute.

He said: "This was only ever about making the Cowley Road safer. It was never about replacing police.

"The vast majority of people in East Oxford are telling me they want CCTV and it looks like we are getting somewhere."

Important areas to cover included Manzil Way and the Oxford Academy.

He added: "In the last 12 months alone in Cowley Road there has been over 760 crimes. The majority of those crimes have been around violence, street violence, common assault, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

"Those people that are engaged in criminal behaviour, with the knowledge that the cameras are there, invariably won't engage in criminal behaviour."

He said there had been more than 700 arrests as a direct result of CCTV in the past year. Where crime was displaced, policing was increased.

Nuala Young, chairman of the east area committee, said the working group would now discuss where cameras should go, with the hope of them being installed early next year.

Students had joined the campaign and Oxford University Student Union president Martin McCluskey said: "It's going to be good for student safety and I think it's going to reassure a lot of people living in the area.

"It's certainly going to reassure me that there is going to be a lot of monitoring and more police freed up in the wider area of East Oxford."

Traders were also happy. Jan Bartlett, of Premier Letting, Cowley Road, said: "It not only means people are safer but it means property is safer, cars are safer and hopefully the drug dealers and prostitutes will move away from the area."

Clinton Pugh, who runs restaurants Cafe Coco and Kazbar, added: "We can know that if damage is being done or harm is being done it is being monitored and we might be able to catch the culprits."

Nick Gladwin, owner of Baby Simple Bar in Cowley Road, said: "CCTV cameras can only be a positive thing. Cowley Road is the only place without it."

Rick Windell, landlord of The Hobgoblin in Cowley Road, said: "It is great. We have been pushing for CCTV for years - Cowley Road is ten years behind the rest of Oxford."