Issue - meetings

At the previous meeting the Committee reviewed the draft report documenting the feedback that members gave at the meeting on 1 September 2011 on their site visits to Macclesfield CCTV Control Room. During the previous meeting the following resolutions were made:

(a)  That the report with the agreed changes be forwarded to the Safer and Stronger Communities Portfolio Holder.

(b)  That the Scrutiny Officer be requested to ask the following questions of the Head of Safer and Stronger Communities.

i.      Are members of the public allowed to review CCTV footage themselves?

ii.    Are CCTV tapes subject to the Freedom of Information Act?

The Head of Safer & Stronger Communities had provided the Scrutiny Officer with answers to the questions. The Scrutiny Officer stated that public could only request to view specific footage under subject access rights and would need to fill out the relevant form and pay a fee. Under data protection the Council would need to ensure that others were protected and reason for viewing was valid. In practice that meant any other individuals included in any footage viewed would need to be ‘obscured’ and registration numbers (and any other data that could be traced to another person) would also need to be blanked. There was a cost to that editing and hence the fee. Members of the Public could not otherwise request to review CCTV footage nor were tapes subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The Committee also noted that the CCTV Control Room Site Visit report had been forwarded to the Safer and Stronger Communities Portfolio Holder.