Vertical Markets

Public space CCTV trends

by Mark Rowe

A round-up of some trends in public space CCTV in 2014.

Some councils are putting quite detailed statistics online of what their cameras and operators see and do. For instance, in the north London borough of Hackney, their ‘CCTV service statistics’ are broken down by month. June 2014 for instance saw some 1398 incidents logged by operators, the smallest number by month so far in the year. By far the most arose as a result of police radio, 1071; the second most common source of incidents came from the operators themselves. Typical causes of incidents were robberies, anti-social behaviour (ASB), traffic offences and commercial burglaries. The council also offers statistics of location of incidents: the largest source by month is usually either Hackney or Dalston Kingsland town centres, followed by Shoreditch and Stoke Newington. The council also offers stats on camera downtime and camera availability, typically more than 99 per cent. The stats for the smaller number of cameras covering Hackney Homes estates and property are also broken down by camera.

For the stats visit the London borough of Hackney website – http://www.hackney.gov.uk/Assets/Documents/CCTV-stats-2014.pdf

Likewise, Herefordshire County Council offers a quarterly online document about the public space cameras in Hereford, Ross-on-Wye, Ledbury and Leominster: visit https://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/media/7823316/cctv_news_quarter_4_2013_2014.pdf

Among the figures, by far the quietest day in terms of incidents is Tuesday; and the most busy days are Saturday and Sunday; followed by Friday and Thursday.

The government said recently that will make it illegal to use what the Coalition called ‘CCTV spy cars’ alone to enforce on-street parking. So said Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin in June.

According to those Conservative ministers, that will give a fairer deal by reining-in what they term over-zealous parking enforcement.

A Deregulation Bill proposes that tickets will have to be fixed to the windscreen by parking wardens, so it will be illegal for councils to issue penalty charge notices to drivers by post using what the Coalition called the ‘CCTV spy cars’. Pickles spoke of the cars, mainly used in London (pictured; a car in Tower Hamlets) such as Westminster City Council; and some other big cities, as a ‘clear abuse of CCTV, which should be used to catch criminals, and not as a cash cow’. The topic featured in the May issue of Professional Security; civil liberties campaigners queried why hundreds of councils used such ‘spy cars’ and static CCTV to raise hundreds of millions of pounds revenue from on-street parking enforcement, when public space CCTV was supposedly about community safety.

Councils though can still use CCTV to issue tickets by post to critical routes such as schools, bus lanes, bus stops and red routes where public transport must be kept moving for safety reasons.

What might be of interest to cash in transit contract companies – who like other deliverers have had to accept parking tickets as a price of doing business – is that the Government proposes ten-minute “grace periods” at the end of on-street paid for and free parking.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: “CCTV spy cars can be seen lurking on every street raking in cash for greedy councils and breaking the rules that clearly state that fines should not be used to generate profit for town halls. Over-zealous parking enforcement and unreasonable stealth fines by post undermine the high street, push up the cost of living and cost local authorities more in the long term.

The Bill had its second reading in the House of Lords in July, and next goes to committee in the House of Lords in October.

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