Free Help & Advice about CCTV Law: In association with NFH.mobi & NFHiB, the world's most popular help site, for anyone with neighbour problems.

CCTV Law

Using CCTV to tackle Neighbours From Hell

CCTV Law

It's perhaps worth mentioning that using covert CCTV in a domestic environment is entirely lawful, provided it is not used in such a way as to cause a deliberate harassment to the neighbouring properties.

Where CCTV is used appropriately, it should be applied in a measured and responsible way, so as to minimise any potential coverage of areas outside of your property, whilst still offering the best overall degree of monitoring for your own home.

Ideally, an individual CCTV camera should be tasked with a specific role, the equipment chosen and installed in such a way as to fulfil that function precisely. If you try and do too many things with a single camera, it won't do any of them properly and the results will almost certainly be useless.

Cameras come in all shapes and sizes, and whilst performance can vary enormously from one to another, it is absolutely vital that the correct model is selected for the task ahead.

From a legal perspective, the Data Protection Act (DPA) does not apply to domestic CCTV and neither does the Human Rights Act (HRA). There is current legislation which relates to the "Permitted Development" aspect of installing a camera, so for example two camera's fixed less than 10 metres apart, would be considered "unlawful", unless they were subject to a valid planning consent from the Local Authority.

You can find out lots more about using CCTV in your home, by visiting the NFHiB forum and going to the 'CCTV' folder, where apart from lots of useful information, you can also find details of other peoples experiences using this increasingly affordable technology.

NFHiB recommended link: DoktorJon.co.uk ('Use and Application of CCTV').

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