The number of council-controlled CCTV cameras has nearly trebled in a decade, new figures have revealed. There are now thought to be 60,000 cameras run from town halls across the UK.
The civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch uncovered the scale of CCTV use by local authorities in a major national study. Alex Deane, the director of the group, said CCTV was seen as a "cheap alternative to policing". He added: "Local councils across Britain are creating enormous networks of CCTV surveillance at great expense, but the evidence for the ability of CCTV to deter or solve crimes is sketchy at best. The quality of footage is frequently too poor to be used in courts, the cameras are often turned off to save money and control rooms are rarely manned 24 hours a day."
The study, entitled Big Brother is Watching, found that 418 local authorities control 59,753 cameras. Ten years ago, a similar study found that the total was 21,000. Ministers insist that CCTV is "an important tool" in crime fighting and argue that cameras reduce fear of crime. But a Metropolitan Police study found only one crime is solved every year for every 1,000 CCTV cameras.
