Since the 24th October 2001 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 and other related
legislation has had far reaching consequences for those who own,
manage or operate CCTV systems in the United Kingdom. Every aspect of
this new legislation impacts upon your use of CCTV.

The Code of Practice contains 62 legally enforceable 'Standards' that
must be met to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998.
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 1998 came into force on March 1st 2000 and the
Information Commissioner has issued a Code of Practice for CCTV
systems. This Code was updated on July 14th 2000 and is available at
www.ico.gov.uk.

The code is also available from the above site as a 49-page word document.

Unfortunately, we find that those who are responsible for implementing
the act consistently report that working through the code of practice
is like swimming in treacle and ask what is available to help us break
it down into a checklist of items that need implementing.

You will find at The Data Protection Act and CCTV our own
interpretation and summary of the requirements of the act. This
however still leaves a number of questions unanswered such as.

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.

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.

We recommend that every system also has:

A Small System Checklist. We supply this free of charge with the Total
Disk Management System or the Incident Download Pack below.
A Management and Download Pack. This contains necessary forms that you
need to log system maintenance, the passing on of evidence to the
Police or a third party and other items that may require an audit
trail in the event of recordings being required as evidence.
The Correct Signage.

Please contact us if you would like help in putting together the correct
Data Protection Pack for your business.

Should you have pictures where some peoples faces need to be obscured
we are also able to supply a 'Subject Right of Access Pack' which
includes the necessary editing service.

When stocks of your materials run low we can also supply cost
effective refills to save you the need of re-purchasing complete
packs.