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Drive-by Spies: CCTV cars issue £8 million in fines in just 12 months

New research conducted by Big Brother Watch – the non-partisan grassroots campaign fighting intrusions on our privacy and freedom – reveals that 54 CCTV Smart Cars operated in 31 local councils in Britain, caught and fined at least 188,000 motorists between April 2009 and March 2010.

To read the full report, with a breakdown of which councils have CCTV Smart cars and the amount each accrued in fines – please click here.

Top lines from the research include:

  • There are currently 54 CCTV Smart cars patrolling 31 local council areas in Britain.
  • CCTV Smart cars have made councils at least £8,069,714.67 in fines in the period 1st April 2009 – 31st March 2010. This is equal to £322,788.58 for every council operating a CCTV Smart car, or £187,667.78 per car.
  • In the same period, CCTV Smart cars have been involved in the punishment of at least 187,993 motorists.
  • The average cost of purchasing a CCTV Smart car is £40,547.83, however the majority of councils (22 of the 31) lease their cars from private parking contractors. Given the high return in fines from these cars and the contracts, Big Brother Watch is concerned that the spread of the CCTV car is being fuelled by private contractors for commercial reasons, and by councils for revenue raising purposes.

Research conducted by Big Brother Watch has revealed that there are now 54 CCTV cars patrolling 31 local councils in Britain. Of these councils 25 have provided data on the use of their CCTV Smart car, which records that in total, mobile CCTV in the UK issued just under 188,000 fines in the period 1st April 2009 – 31st March 2010, totalling a staggering £8 million in revenue.

Big Brother Watch is opposed to any increase in state surveillance, particularly directed surveillance – sent out to catch people and raise revenue rather than any intention to make the streets safer. This concern is heightened because 22 of the 31 councils lease their CCTV cars from private parking contractors, who make no secret of the vehicles' usefulness in making profits. The evidence in our report  suggests that the spread of the CCTV car is being fuelled by private contractors for commercial reasons, and not in any effort to reduce dangerous driving.

Dylan Sharpe, Campaign Director of Big Brother Watch, said:

"The CCTV Smart car represents a very dangerous escalation in Britain's surveillance society. The vehicles are sent out to catch people and make money, with road safety only an afterthought. £8 million is an eye-watering amount to take in fines in just 25 councils. It is surely only a matter of time before more councils start using these cars. The Coalition Government must act now and prevent that from happening."  

To see if your local council has a CCTV Smart car, and the amount its made in fines – take a look at the full report by clicking here.

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Big Brother Watch Posted in CCTV
  • http://profile.typepad.com/jamesoneill Jamesoneill

    I notice one of the providers linked to is “NSL” . I notice their about page says
    “We treat our customers in the same way we would like to be treated in a similar situation”
    Spying on them as they go about their lawful business. It would be a wheeze to station your own camera outside their offices.

  • http://www.carfinderservice.com/ car advice

    Agree.. stealth tax!

  • http://www.kimharding.net/blog/ Kim

    Break the law pay the fine, that is not a stealth tax, it is crime and punishment. Get a grip on reality. Last year 26,096 people were killed or seriously injured on British roads. Driving is not a right, it is a privilege granted by licence. Being able to use the road without the risk of being killed or seriously injured, by some moron who thinks they are above the law, is a fundamental human right!!

  • Nigel

    I quite agree this is not a stealth Tax, if people break the law then they should accept the fine, it is just a shame that more motorists do not get caught and more money collected then put back into getting these idiots that speed and cyclists that ignore pedestrian crossings off our roads. I live close to the A20 and in the time that I travel down the road each day at least 10 people should be done for speeding and that is going more than 10 miles over the limit. If you can’t and don’t want to pay the fine then DO NOT DO THE CRIME. If every one stuck to the law of the land, then that would be good, but face up to facts that is not going to happen. If more people got caught hopefully that would reduce the number of idiots and bring down things like council tax and car insurance if they re-invested the money in the police budget and reduced the number of idiots on the road. For people like myself I do not want to be paying for other people breaking the law. If you haven’t got anything to hide then its not a problem, you BBW guy’s clearly have something to hide!

  • Sceptical

    Utter rubbish about contraventions not being viewed at the time by the operator and about loading/unloading not being taken account of. Any half decent authority /contractor follows TMA 2004 guidelines which cover this. More ill informed scare stories….

  • Bob

    I think the comment posters are missing the point. No-one argues that if you break the law then you should be punished – however, the use of CCTV cars questions the methodology of catching people; since if people were pulled up at the time of the offence and told, then it would do more to modify behaviour then a PCN in the post two weeks afterwards. Therefore reinforces the point that catching and modifying behaviours is not the primary objective of the cars, but to raise revenue rather than deal with the issue in hand.

  • Blue

    Wow, some odd comments to this post, some people seem to think this is about speeding. Nope it’s about local authorities buying a super bit of kit to park in streets where they know motorist will contravene some badly placed signs, then send them a fine saying if they don’t fight the fine, they get it half price. But you will find that most of the contracts awarded to the private companies who provided everything from the smart car to the bailiffs will often be dodgy contract, or the offence could never have been committed in the first place.
    These smart cars have little to do with road safety and everything to do with raising revenue.
    All you have to do is a little search on Google to find out more, plenty of sites telling people what’s going on, it’s up to you if you want to take notice.
    But one day you might find yourself defending a PCN given six months ago, you never got the first letter, let alone the reminders, now you may have the bailiffs on the doorstep demanding £1000’s, perhaps then you will come to sites like this for help, it can happen to anyone, no matter how honest, it’s time to wake up and do some research.

  • http://www.kimharding.net/blog/ Kim

    Blue, try thinking about why the signs are there. Are you trying to suggest that they are there so that the council can catch people to collect revenue?? More likely they are there for a serious reason, such as make the roads safer, if more people took responsibility for their actions then we wouldn’t need these rules and the means of enforcement. Sadly, many people fail to understand the concept of responsibility, try looking it up in a dictionary.

  • SteveL

    I would love to see these cars ticketing parents who park on school keep clear zones in my city. Its viewed as a place where you can park your 4×4, and even though the council traffic wardens visit once a term, once they’ve been you know you are safe. If they did a driveby once a fortnight, parents would park less selfishly: http://bristolcars.blogspot.com/search/label/school-run

  • Knut

    How unbelievably insulting. It seems comment sections are exclusively populated by sanctimonious individuals intent on grasping half the point before jumping on top of their soapboxes. I AM KEYBOARD HERO – HEAR ME ROAR. It’s like being perpetually stuck in the pub with some half-cut half-wit with all the answers.
    Stopping people driving irresponsibly is clearly a good idea. There is no debate in that regard, so don’t embarrass yourselves in trying to create one. Instead, if you can ignore your jerking knees for a moment, realise that this isn’t about taxes, crime or prevention of it.
    This.
    Is.
    About.
    Surveillance.
    You don’t have to be a criminal i.e. have ‘something to hide’, or a sociopath, i.e. ‘fail to understand the concept of responsibility’ to react to an increase in surveillance. That some of you are asserting this is both deeply offensive and profoundly ignorant.
    There are many normal, well-balanced, law-abiding people who believe that is not acceptable for a government to track its citizens’ every waking moment. People to whom blithely accepting yet another layer of tracking is abhorrent. Some of them are even governing this country, it seems:
    The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness.
    programmeforgovernment.hmg.gov.uk/civil-liberties/index.html
    We’ll have to wait and see if they actually manage to implement any of that… Regardless, it’s encouraging to see that those in charge recognise there has been significant erosion of our freedoms, even if many of the commentators on here fail to.

  • Bruce

    You’d think they would make them highly visible like speed cameras if the purpose was as a deterrent. Yet they park up discretely and pop up a periscope. They park for hours on the very same yellow lines that it is dangerous and congesting for us to park on for a couple of minutes. One law for them and another for us, eh?
    Are these guys CRB checked? I have heard of them pointing their high powered zooms at people and into houses (the periscope goes conveniently to bedroom height). What about the privacy of our intimate moments or our kids carefree nakedness? How long before such footage ends up on the Internet or even some paedo site?

  • Common Sense NOT Common Purpose

    Reading the “if you have nothing to hide then nothing to fear” type comments that support the furthering of state surveillance, I can’t help but wonder are there really people out there so naive?..or are these comments part of a paid government campaign to counter the growing number of waking up people-(its been done before I might add, just one example being Ted Heath’s illegal and treasonous entry into the Common Market when his backers sent out thousands of letters to newspapers supporting the move).
    I sincerely hope its the latter, as if there views are genuine then we really do deserve the nightmare “technocratic dictatorship” that is unfolding-maybe its just as well as the generations that fought Corporate Fascism are fading away as they would wonder why the hell they ran up beaches under a hail of machinegun fire (or was it part of the plan to introduce the totalitarian state as those who knew and fought freedom went into history?) knowing that the dumber and less educated subsequent generations would be easier to enslave.

  • http://www.notomob.co.uk Bruce

    I suggest anyone who thinks these cars are operated fairly should see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ADTL6Se22w
    In a single moth at Lower James St, Westminster’s spy cars fined around 500 motorists for obeying the law (as stated in the relevant Traffic Management Order) and not following their incorrect signs! The crooks won’t even pro-actively refund the money they STOLE.
    We have numerous examples of them enforcing incorrect, missing or highly inconspicuous signs. They prey on confusion.

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