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.dataprotection.gov.uk

You will need to access the section 'Guidance and other principles' then 'Codes of practice our responses & other papers' and finally 'CCTV Code of Practice'.

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.