New arrangements under which Cambridge City Council’s CCTV is run by Huntingdonshire District Council have left Cambridge City Councillors being told they are unable to direct where Cambridge’s portable cameras are deployed.
At Cambridge’s North Area Committee on the 10th of September 2015 councillor Gerri Bird requested one of Cambridge City Council’s redeployable CCTV cameras be retained in its current location on Scotland Road in East Chesterton.
Cambridge City Council’s Safer Communities Manager Lynda Kilkelly addressed the committee and told councillors:
We don’t actually have control of where cameras, the re-deployable cameras, stays up or not, that’s decided by the CCTV operations manager and he prioritises whatever applications he’s getting in for redeployables.
Cambridge City Council has entered an arrangement with Huntingdonshire District Council and they now run the city’s CCTV system. The system is managed by a CCTV Head of Operations and two CCTV team leaders who are all Huntingdonshire District Council officers. Cambridge City Councillors cannot direct Huntingdonshire District Council officers in the same way as they can their own staff.
The July 2013 Committee Report which led to the then leader of the council, Liberal Democrat Tim Bick, deciding to enter into the arrangement for Cambridge’s CCTV to be run from Huntingdon District Council’s offices doesn’t deal with the ability of councillors to determine where cameras are located.
The code of practice for the management of the system reveals Cambridge’s councillors have also lost control over the policies under which the city’s CCTV cameras are run, and over the selling of footage to television producers, all of which is, according to the protocol, now decided by Huntingdonshire District Council.
The contract under which the CCTV service is provided does not appear to have been published. A suggestion is made in the committee report that a committee of officers from the two councils could meet to set CCTV policy; if these meetings occur details are not published and the meetings don’t appear on the public meetings calendars.
Prior to the shared service arrangement Cambridge City Council’s CCTV policies were debated locally, in public, by elected representatives.
The Leader of Cambridge City Council, Lewis Herbert, has responded to the statement that Huntingdonshire District Council officers decide where Cambridge’s CCTV cameras are deployed saying:
Not true – reports to both Councils. I am consulted &assess sites proposed by Cllrs, residents & police
Officers running the CCTV system in Huntingdonshire have stated[1][2][3][4]:
The CCTV Manager effectively works for both councils, as do the CCTV Team. The redeployable cameras are the property of City Council and as stated they along with the local Police request the locations, the CCTV Manger just has the responsibility to make sure the correct legislation is followed and the best sighting.
This is clearly quite a different role for the CCTV manager than that outlined by the Cambridge City Council officer at the North Area Committee.
Council officers sometimes make inaccurate statements to councillors. Tackling suspected cases of inaccuracy is difficult as it is councillors, not officers who are publicly accountable. We need to ask our councillors to ensure they are receiving the advice they require to fulfil their roles. Recently a statement by this same officer, to another area committee, on the role of council officers in giving notices to those breaching the public spaces protection order applying to areas off Mill Road, was challenged in a similar way to the recent statement on CCTV deployment.
In 2013 Cambridge City Councillors were spending around half a million pounds per year on CCTV 2010: £748K) which is a hefty fraction of the money councillors get to choose how to spend. Much of the money they control is spent on services they have to provide by law; the CCTV system is something they themselves choose to provide.
The shared services agreement was expected to save money, and the latest budget shows CCTV related savings of £75K/year, in addition to a £36K underspend on the budget due to unfilled posts. The council’s budget papers are obfuscated in that they focus only on budget changes, not on the absolute amounts of money involved which I think would be more informative.
My Views
It appears to me that there has been a loss of democratic control over Cambridge’s CCTV system as a result of the move to the arrangement with Huntingdonshire District Council.
Given the comments from the leader of the council the situation perhaps isn’t actually as bad as the officer saying “we don’t actually have control” indicated though it’s telling that a senior closely involved in the policing related areas of the councils operations described the situation in this way.
I would like to see the contract for the provision of CCTV services published and for councillors to make the arrangements for running, and overseeing, the service clear as there is currently clearly confusion among councillors and officers. I would like to see our councillors in Cambridge taking back the power over the deployment of their assets and over the policies applying to their use. To enable the joint system to work efficiently presumably both councils adopting the same policies would be desirable.
CCTV is seen as a solution to all sorts of problems from HGV weight limit breaches to recreational drug taking in particular areas. I think members of the public are often too quick to demand it, and councillors too quick to offer it as a solution where tackling the underlying causes of problems such as education and signage would be a more effective response.
Bringing the CCTV system under the auspices of Huntingdonshire District Council may well make it easier for people to obtain footage of themselves from Cambridge’s cameras via a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act. I am aware of a number of reports of people who struggled to obtain such footage from Cambridge City Council and the council previously had a policy of breaching the law in this area.
2 responses to “Cambridge City Councillors Told They Have No Control of CCTV Camera Deployment”
A document on the Huntingdon District Council website states:
The code of practice for the management of the system states:
There is an inconsistency over who owns the system which could be resolved by publishing the contract and associated documents.
At Cambridge’s East Area Committee on the 7th of April 2016 a member of the public called for CCTV to be used to enforce a ban on right turns from Mill Road into Devonshire Road.
Cllr Catherine Smart (Liberal Democrat, Romsey) stated:
When Cllr Smart made the comments she was sitting next to the council leader, Cllr Lewis Herbert, who has previously stated that he is the individual who provides the democratic input to CCTV placement decisions saying: “I am consulted &assess sites proposed by Cllrs, residents & police”.
I don’t know if the CCTV Cambridge City Council funds has the ability to be used to enforce traffic offences; and I don’t know if the police have equipment they would be prepared to deploy for this purpose – as far as I know the police don’t have their own overt portable CCTV cameras of the kind the council put on lampposts, it has been reported a decade or so ago they have a CCTV surveillance van, I’ve not heard any recent reliable references to it.