Issue - meetings

Meeting: 23/04/2021 - Cabinet (Item 175)

175 Cabinet Members' Items - Joint Report of the Housing Portfolio Holder and the Corporate Finance and Governance Portfolio Holder - A.4 - Adoption of the CCTV Code of Practice pdf icon PDF 166 KB

To submit the Tendring District Council CCTV Code of Practice and the Surveillance Camera Commissioner’s 12 Guiding Principles to Cabinet, so that it may officially adopt these documents on behalf of the Council.

Additional documents:

Decision:

RESOLVED that Cabinet –

      

(a)   adopts the CCTV Code of Practice for Tendring District Council and the 12 Guiding Principles, as set out in Appendix A to item A.4 of the Joint Report of the Housing Portfolio Holder and the Corporate Finance & Governance Portfolio Holder;

 

(b)   authorises the Assistant Director (Partnerships) to deploy future cameras and decide their location in accordance with the Code of Practice and the 12 Guiding Principles; and

 

(c)   requires that any such decision to deploy will only be made in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Housing and the Council’s Senior Responsible Officer for CCTV, following a compliant proposal being submitted by the relevant Assistant Director or Head of Service, who in their turn will have consulted with the relevant Portfolio Holder, dependent on the nature of the circumstances.

Minutes:

The Cabinet gave consideration to a joint report of the Housing Portfolio Holder and the Corporate Finance & Governance Portfolio Holder (A.4) which submitted the Tendring District Council (TDC) CCTV Code of Practice and the Surveillance Camera Commissioner’s 12 Guiding Principles and sought their official adoption by the Cabinet of those documents on behalf of the Council.

 

It was reported that, at the end of December 2018, the Council’s Internal Audit team had reviewed the working practices with regards to CCTV systems within the Council. A ‘moderate risk’ had been found and an improvement notice had been issued. Since that time a CCTV Code of Practice had been drafted (attached as Appendix 1 to the Portfolio Holders’ joint report) and a new set of Operational Procedures (Appendix 2 to that report) had been written. Both the Code and the Operational Procedures had been endorsed as fit for purpose by the Internal Audit Manager. The Corporate Enforcement Group, the Assistant Director (Governance), the Information Governance and IT Services Manager, and the Safer Communities Manager had also been consulted and their comments incorporated within the Code.

 

Members were informed that the Code of Practice took into consideration the Surveillance Camera Commissioner’s 12 Guiding Principles and gave CCTV operators a framework to work within. The new set of TDC Operational Procedures would cover every CCTV camera that the Council owned, including the cameras within TDC premises, and as such would offer support and guidance to any Officers across the Council that had to use CCTV as part of their role.

 

Direction from the Surveillance Camera Commissioner required that the Council should adopt a CCTV Code of Practice, which was published on the corporate website, and communicated to all staff that needed to comply with it. At this point the new Operational Procedures should be rolled out across the Council, along with a training programme, so that all departments were following the same rules.

 

Cabinet was made aware that once the Code was adopted TDC could apply for a third-party accreditation that would show any specific areas where TDC could improve its systems and procedures or engage an external professional expert from NASCAM (National association of Surveillance Camera Mangers). In advance of this there were known areas that would need attention, namely:

 

·      In consultation with our partners in Essex Police, and also through public engagement, TDC should review the CCTV System yearly to ensure it was meeting its stated aims. This review would also include the current location of fixed CCTV cameras and any specific areas of crime where a new camera location (either a fixed or rapid deployment) should be considered. This was overdue but would commence once the Code was adopted.

·      Many TDC cameras were old and did not have the privacy software that could be used to pixelate any areas where the cameras were looking directly at a residents' premises. Although the cameras were generally sited to cover public open spaces there were a number of instances where private addresses were overlooked.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 175