Edinburgh is Scotland's biggest spender on surveillance, report claims

The City of Edinburgh Council spent £6.2 million on CCTV surveillance over the last four years, making it by far the biggest-spending local authority in Scotland, figures released today show.

A new report [PDF] from privacy campaigners Big Brother Watch shows that the council spent £6,211,425.30 installing and maintaining 232 "public-facing" closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras between 2007 and 2011.

By comparison, neighbouring Fife Council, which maintains over 1,400 cameras, spent just £948,000.

A spokesperson for the council told The Journal: "Our high quality CCTV network deters crime and helps the police bring criminals to justice.

"It is just one element of our highly successful strategy to reduce anti-social behaviour and recent figures show a drop in crime of 21 per cent, with complaints to community safety teams falling by 22 per cent."

The figures, obtained via freedom of information requests, show Edinburgh spending twice as much as its nearest Scottish competition, and ranking fourth in the UK overall.

Big Brother Watch have previously expressed concern over the expansion of surveillance technology in everyday life. Their new report, The Price of Privacy, warns of "negative implications for civil liberties of the expansion of this technology into neighbourhoods and the workplace".

It further claims that CCTV is flawed as a crime-fighting tool, calling it "a costly and ineffective white elephant."

BBW director Nick Pickles told The Journal that the group's report "highlights how the vastly different approaches to CCTV across local authorities mean the level of crime has become detached from the level of surveillance in our cities.

“Britain is recognised as one of the most monitored countries in the world and so we’re also calling for councils to publish the number of convictions cameras secure so people can decide for themselves if the surveillance we’re being asked to put up is reasonable," he added.

Questions have been raised over how different councils report their expenditure, with council sources questioning the validity of the report's conclusions. Scottish Borders Council, for example, ran up a £600,000 bill despite claiming it operated no cameras, while West Dunbartonshire's local authority operated 396 cameras at apparently no cost.

Birmingham City Council was the UK's biggest spender, racking up £14.3 million in spending servicing 600 cameras. Overall, the report found that 428 local authorities spent £515 million operating 51,600 cameras. The report argues that this sum could have been better spent recruiting over 4,000 new police officers.

Edinburgh council are currently considering plans for permanent CCTV cameras to be installed on the Meadows, in a bid to combat crime and antisocial behaviour. A pair of sexual assaults in the popular park late last year prompted calls for improved public safety measures there.