Enfield News
Enfield Council defends being among UK's biggest CCTV spenders
5:10pm Tuesday 21st February 2012
Enfield Council has defended spending £5 million on CCTV after the borough came sixth in a list of the highest spending authorities in the UK.
Figures researched by the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch revealed that the council spent the cash between 2007 and 2011 despite only having 169 cameras.
Group director Nick Pickles said that “Britain has an out-of-control surveillance culture” that did little to improve public safety.
But Enfield Council said the high spending was due to a three-year £1.5m refurbishment programme and the borough’s CCTV centre had been commended as a centre of excellence.
It added: “Arrests for incidents have soared with the expansion of our CCTV systems and these provided invaluable footage during the recent riots which provided evidence for over 200 arrests.
“The number plate recognition systems have also recovered stolen vehicles to the approximate value of £1.3m to date and hundreds of arrests of prolific burglars and car thieves.
“We believe the investment in our systems is vital for the safety of every resident and property in the borough.”
Big Brother Watch criticised local authorities nationwide for spending £515m on cameras – money it argues should be spent on training more police officers.
But Sergeant Andrew Heasman, of the Metropolitan Police CCTV unit, said: “This is not Big Brother – that is a hollow argument in my opinion.
“Cameras provide crucial evidence - I’m sure if these people were the victims of crime they wouldn’t think that.
“CCTV can prevent crime, convict criminals or prove people’s innocence but only if the quality is good enough.
“If you are going to invest in cameras they need to be well maintained and good quality. It is something I think should be used more widely than it already is.”
Top of the list of local authority expenditure was Birmingham, which spent £14m on 636 cameras in the four-year period, while Barnet came tenth with spending of £4.6m.