An Introduction to Legislation affecting CCTV Operations

The information on this section of the PCMA website is freely available to anyone wishing to access it, but PCMA does not offer this information by way of Legal Advice. You should check with your own legal advisors as to the correctness and suitability of applying it to your own circumstances.

It is very difficult to learn about legislation in a few minutes after all people in the legal profession spend years learning it and still don’t always get it right. So, the approach should probably be that CCTV Operators are civilians, albeit trained and skilled civilians, and not law enforcement officers.

Therefore the way to interpret legislation is that if a CCTV Operator sees something (whilst using the cameras to observe), which they believe, as a member of the public, is wrong or unlawful, they should report it to the police. The police will then take an operational decision on how to deal with the incident. CCTV Operators should not disagree with the way that the police have dealt or not dealt with the incident, but should record all details and bring it to the CCTV Manager’s attention for further investigation.

There have been a number of Acts passed by Parliament, which will affect the way that CCTV systems are operated. The most important of these are;

All of these Acts are new, having come into force since 2000, and their full effect on the CCTV system will take some time to clarify. However as a responsibly run CCTV systems, we have a duty to attempt to address these Acts now.

Therefore CCTV Codes of Practices and/or CCTV Operational Manual should lay down the CCTV organisations approach to complying with these Acts.

Organisations should not monitor any external CCTV cameras unless the owners of those cameras agree to abide by the rules laid out in the organizations CCTV Codes of Practice or its CCTV Operational Manual.

The key objectives of the organisations CCTV system must be clearly stated and some examples are: