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CCTV ruling favours operators

“A recent Review in Lincolnshire has given an interesting result and muddied the waters in relation to CCTV production and conditions that are increasingly lengthy and specific in their provision.

Premises are regularly and routinely faced with a request from the Police for very detailed CCTV conditions requiring "immediate" production of CCTV images and we have clients that have faced Closure Notices for failure to produce the CCTV upon request. This marries together two interesting points, the first being how specific does a CCTV condition need to be and how enforceable is it in the light of Data Protection and secondly if you do not comply with a CCTV condition, will you always face a Closure Notice?

The CCTV condition in question in this case stated that "Provision of CCTV and recordings to be made available to Police upon request". Michael Kheng of Kurnia  successfully argued that whatever the condition said, the premises were still subject to the Data Protection Legislation and the Police would need to obtain a Court Order. That was upheld by the Licensing Sub Committee upon the review and the condition amended to read as follows:-

"Tamper resistant CCTV system shall be installed, maintained in working order and operated at the premises. Subject to a suitable request and agreement of the Data Controller, images shall be released to Lincolnshire Police so long as the Data Controller is happy to do so in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998"

A clear indication that whatever the condition may say, Data Protection Legislation is not overruled. Clearly, consideration needs to be given to the facts in each instance, but it would seem to us that if there were appropriate grounds for failing to produce CCTV (as in this instance) the Police cannot rely on the condition and could not and should not issue a Closure Notice based on non compliance with the CCTV condition. This is relevant as our experience as clients are increasingly facing threats of Closure Notices for minor or technical "breaches" of conditions.