For the last 20 years it has been a criminal offence to use an unregistered CCTV system to record people in a public or private place unless it meets certain criteria.
The introduction of the Data Protection Act 1998 had far reaching consequences for those who own, manage or operate CCTV systems in the United Kingdom. Every aspect of this legislation impacts upon the use of CCTV.
In respect to CCTV, The Data Protection Act 1998 came into force on March 1st 2000 and the Information Commissioner issued a Code of Practice for CCTV systems. This Code was updated in 2000, 2008, 2014 and 2017 with the latest version being available as part of our Data Protection Information Pack.
The Code of Practice contains over 60 legally enforceable ‘Standards’ that must be met to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act. The Commissioner includes a further 30 points of good practice, which together with the standards, are designed to build and maintain public confidence in CCTV systems and to ensure that they operate within the law.
The Data Protection Act 2018 came into force in May 2018 and replaces the Data Protection Act 1998. You will find at The Data Protection Act and CCTV a summary of the requirements of the act but as this still leaves a number of questions unanswered we have prepared a Data Protection Information Pack for visitors to this site. This is free of charge and should answer most of the questions that you may have concerning The Data Protection Act and CCTV as well as providing an extensive checklist enabling you to ensure that your organisation is fully complying with the requirements of the legislation.
Our CCTV Data Protection Act Information Pack contains the following:
- DPA Code of Practice from the Information Commissioner’s Office. This explains what the law requires of you if you have a CCTV System.
- Our DPA Self Assessment document providing further details on the law and a simple checklist for you to ensure that your organisation is complying with the DPA.
- A comprehensive catalogue of available CCTV signage, to help meet your legal responsibility to warn people that CCTV is in operation, who is operating it and how they can be contacted.
- A Small System Compliance Pack containing the documentation that is needed to prove compliance with current legislation as well as data compliant DVDs & a USB for the legal recording of specific incidents.
- Details of our CCTV Auditing Service which is available for those who wish to assess the effectiveness and legality of their surveillance system.
If you would like a copy of our DPA Information Pack then contact us and put “DPA Information Pack”. The pack will be sent by e-mail in PDF format.
Ensuring that an organisation’s CCTV system is fully compliant with the Data Protection Act can often involve weeks of work. Very often this time is spent reinventing the wheel as we are able, often in a few hours, to conduct a full professional assessment of your system and provide full documentation and comprehensive advice on where your system meets or fails to meet current legislation and official guidelines.
Contact us if you are planning to install a new CCTV system as it is easier and less expensive, to ensure that the system is designed in line with the Data Protection Act than have to pay for compliance retrospectively.
We can also recommend an excellent Data Protection Awareness Training Course for organisations requiring half day in-house training for staff that have responsibilities regarding the DPA.
The police state that 80% of CCTV evidence is inadmissible in court. Causes of such failures include inadequate documentation, lack of audit trail and incorrect recording of evidence.
We recommend that you ensure that you are fully compliant with the DPA as, having spent thousands of pounds on the installation of a CCTV system, it is indefensible to then have the evidence rendered unusable by the relatively small lack of investment in procedural items.
Please use the above links to view further details of these products and contact us if you would like help in putting together the correct Data Protection Pack for your business.