The spy in the sky

It’s a wet August afternoon in the Sparkbrook area of Birmingham and a small group of residents have gathered around a soggy trestle table outside a food store called Mushtaqs. The words ‘Say no to spy cameras’ are scrawled on hand-made posters stuck to the table. A steady stream of people walk past - some stop to study the leaflets handed to them, others hang around longer to chat, raising their voices to be heard over the traffic noise.

In June, this group of residents from Sparkbrook and Washwood Heath, two predominantly Muslim areas two miles from Birmingham city centre, won a landmark public consultation against local authorities to have 216 CCTV and automatic numberplate recognition cameras, which were installed in April this year, covered up. This is thought to be the first time residents have won a public consultation on the positioning of cameras.

The installation of surveillance technology in Birmingham has opened up a wider debate about CCTV. Does it actually make communities safer? Do residents generally support it? And what happens if they don’t?

The presence of CCTV cameras - thought to number up to 4.2 million across Britain, about one for every 14 people - is a hugely divisive issue. For every person who passionately wants more of them in the hope of increasing security, there’s another who opposes the invasion of privacy.

Whatever side they are on, residents usually do not have a say. Councils and housing associations fund the installation of CCTV around their properties, but they are under no obligation to formally consult residents over their location.

The Safer Birmingham Partnership - a joint venture between West Midlands Police and Birmingham Council - did not adequately consult residents when it constructed its ‘ring of steel’ in Sparkbrook and Washwood, placing cameras at intervals around a 10.5 square mile area of the city in an initiative called ‘project champion’.

Camera shy

Following the influx of cameras the people there faced three times more surveillance than shoppers and partygoers in Birmingham city centre. As well as the visible surveillance, there were also 40 ‘covert’ cameras concealed from view. Their community was completely surrounded, meaning no one could enter or exit undetected.

Six weeks after the cameras were installed, an investigation by The Guardian newspaper revealed they were funded by a £3.5 million grant from the government’s terrorism and allied matters fund, which is administered by the Association of Chief Police Officers.

After pressure from the national newspaper and local campaigners, the police admitted they had neither told residents that the cameras were going to be installed, nor been open about the anti-terror funding. The Safer Birmingham Partnership was forced to take the cameras out of use after residents complained they were being used to spy on members of the Muslim community rather than to prevent crime.

This was only a partial victory, says the core group of four residents who are leading the protest outside Mustaqs supermarket - they want the cameras removed. While they’re still up, they argue, they could be switched back on.

Steve Jolly, mastermind of their campaign against the cameras, has produced flyers for volunteers to hand out on the street. He’s keen to drum up enough public support to compel Birmingham Council to remove the cameras (see box: Local protest, below).

Mr Jolly, who wears an anti-CCTV T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase ‘It’s rude to stare’, has lived in Moseley, a relatively affluent part of Birmingham which neighbours Sparkbrook, for nearly 10 years. The ‘ring of steel’ encompasses his street - when a camera went up close to his house, he decided to investigate.

‘There could be up to 92,000 people affected [by the surveillance],’ he says. ‘From a resident’s perspective, it’s felt like it’s something that is used against us, not for us.’

Mr Jolly suspects that if cameras hadn’t crept into Moseley their presence could have gone unquestioned. ‘Placing them there struck me as really odd because it’s a sought-after area with low crime and is predominantly middle class,’ he states.

In order to raise the game, Mr Jolly approached human rights specialist group Liberty to represent residents’ case. In July Liberty’s legal officer Corinna Ferguson sent a letter on their behalf to Chris Sims, chief constable of West Midlands Police and the Police Authority, with copies going to the Safer Birmingham Partnership, Birmingham Council, the home secretary and the Association of Chief Police Officers. The letter threatened the police force with judicial review action if the cameras were not removed.

‘[Project champion] is discriminatory because it targets the Muslim community: this is no ordinary crime and disorder measure. It failed to consult the residents and misled some of the local councillors,’ states Ms Ferguson. ‘We’re still waiting for verification that the covert cameras have been dismantled.’

At a council meeting in April 2009, assistant chief constable Stuart Hyde denied that counter-terrorism was the main purpose of the project and failed to disclose the source of funding. At least two local councillors have made complaints to the Independent Police Complaints Commission about this.

In June, the Safer Birmingham Partnership acknowledged they ‘could have been more explicit’ about the role of counter-terrorism in the project.

And last week The Guardian newspaper published a story announcing that Mr Hyde and Sir Paul Scott-Lee, who was west midlands chief constable until 2009, could face disciplinary action after an enquiry by Birmingham City Council into Project Champion revealed national security officials were in ‘careful planning and discussion’ with west midlands police about a project to monitor the Muslim suburbs from 2006.

Despite the stubborn summer drizzle, there’s now a queue of people waiting to sign the protestors’ petition. Moseley resident Quanwal Zaman, 38, is one of dozens of people who stop on their way down the high street.

‘These cameras are not just about crime,’ she says, gesturing toward the bright blue bag covering the CCTV cameras on the pole behind her. ‘People say they’ve never had any trouble - so they’re not going up for that reason. We feel like we’re being watched.’

Alistair Wingate, one of protest organisers, steps out of the small crowd to shout, ‘No to spy cameras, so no to spying on our community’ over and over again down a microphone. Eventually he’s accompanied by chorus of car horns from the line of traffic that slowly makes its way down the busy Stratford road.

Unlike some of the group, who simply object to the total surveillance coverage in residential areas, Mr Wingate is passionately anti-surveillance.

‘I don’t see CCTV as helping stop crime, although not all of the group agree with a total ban,’ he says matter-of-factly.

Crime prevention

He and other members of the group reject evidence in support of CCTV. Even a study part-funded by the Home Office, which was published in December 2008 and looked at 43 CCTV-covered areas, says: ‘CCTV has a modest but significant desirable effect on crime.’

It states that CCTV is ‘most effective in reducing crime in car parks, is most effective when targeted at vehicle crimes (largely a function of the successful car park schemes), and is more effective in reducing crime in the UK than in other countries’.

Overall, it concludes that CCTV surveillance should ‘continue to be used to prevent crime in public space, but that it should be more narrowly targeted than its present use would indicate’. ‘Future CCTV schemes should employ high-quality evaluation designs with long follow-up periods,’ it adds.

Generally residents’ opinions on the benefits of cameras are mixed. ‘Some tenants won’t want CCTV because of privacy, but some have fought for years to have cameras on their estates for safety reasons,’ explains Michelle Reid, chief executive at the Tenant Participation Advisory Service.

Unlike the residents in Birmingham, tenants and leaseholders on the Brunel estate, in Westminster, central London, want cameras to be installed. In July 2009 they petitioned Westminster Council and social landlord City West Homes to provide CCTV close to their homes after a spate of crimes.

‘Our estate is full of open walkways that make it a target for crime and anti-social behaviour,’ reads a statement from the residents. ‘Other estates have used CCTV to help the police identify and arrest suspects, and it has cost little to install and next to nothing to run.’

In response, City West Homes purchased four mobile CCTV units for use in the area, and focused them on places where anti-social behaviour was rife. ‘Our residents generally see CCTV as a valuable tool in tackling both crime and anti-social behaviour,’ says Darren Levy, director of customer services at City West.

‘[The cameras] are already proving a useful addition to the wide range of powers and initiatives that we use to tackle anti-social behaviour, reduce fear of crime and improve the quality of life for residents.’

Unclear picture

Legislation surrounding residents’ right to have a say over where CCTV cameras are placed is woolly to say the least. ‘The picture emerging is really one of partnership (i.e. between the police and local authority) activity and decision making with formal links back to communities being via elected representatives,’ explains Eamon Lynch, policy officer at the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group.

Generally residents are not formally consulted over the installation of surveillance technology - their input is usually on a ‘less formal’ basis ‘through their reporting of issues in the area’, he says - this is usually done through tenants’ groups and Neighbourhood Watch organisations.

‘In our experience, discussion with residents is important,’ states TPAS’s Ms Reid. ‘I think people should be able to decide whether they want [CCTV] on their estates - that’s what the new government localism bill, due to be introduced by November 2011, is about - giving local people power. But if plans are going to work then they have to really listen to what people want.

‘If people feel the cameras are invasive then we have to make sure we’re sticking to civil liberties, which includes a right to privacy. Equally, different residents might want different things - for example elderly people may be willing to forgo privacy for extra peace of mind.’

Residents who object to CCTV being installed in their area do have the power to question their local authority argues Charles Farrier, a spokesperson for national campaign group ‘No CCTV’.

‘In terms of consultation, people have forgotten that they can hold the local authorities to account over these things,’ he states. ‘Unless the public is informed about where cameras are going and why, they cannot effectively challenge the police or council.’

In Birmingham it took ongoing resident protest and national media coverage to encourage the council to conduct a consultation over the future of the cameras, which began on 23 August.

‘Birmingham Council, West Midlands Police and the Safer Birmingham Partnership have already recognised that community consultation for security cameras installed in Sparkbrook and Washwood Heath was inadequate. To that end we agreed not to use the cameras,’ says Jackie Russell, director of Safer Birmingham Partnership, who is giving evidence at the scrutiny committee.

‘We will begin a full consultation with all sections of the local community and once we get a clearer idea of what the public wants, we will act accordingly. We will do all we can to gauge the community’s views on this matter.’

Whether or not Steve Jolly and his fellow protesters would have achieved such a result had the funding for the cameras not come from an anti-terror fund is questionable. Certainly, it’s hard to imagine that media coverage by national newspapers as well as local media, would have been anywhere near as widespread if the installation of CCTV had not appeared to monitor the movements of one religious group.

For their part, Muslim and non-Muslim residents of Sparkbrook and Washwood Heath are happy their protest at what they see as a gross invasion of privacy is seeing results.

Campaigner Bridget Parsons has been standing outside on a damp street for more than an hour, but she is in good spirits because of the campaign’s positive effect on the community.

‘We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago where 120 people attended,’ she says. ‘This has stirred up the community because the cameras are so horrible and intrusive. It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s really brought people together.’

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