How Many CCTV Cameras Are There in London?

Walking through the streets of London, you may notice some technology peeling behind the pushes or sitting high atop of a building. These are probably CCTV cameras. But, how many CCTV Cameras are there in London?

The exact year when we started seriously referring to London as “the CCTV capital of the world” is now a matter of historical debate. Some of us used it as early as 1996, when we crossed the 1,000-camera threshold. But that was more than 20 years ago. How many CCTV cameras are there in London today?

The truth is no one knows for sure. There are countless cameras that see the light of day every day, as well as countless cameras that go dark without anyone noticing it.

However, we can estimate the number of cameras in London.

Join us in our quest to figure it out — and in a discussion about what all of this tells us!

How Many CCTV Cameras in London in 2019?

Clearly, the rise in private deployments makes any attempt to get a straight figure futile. But we can do our best to come up with an estimate for the number of CCTV cameras in London.

Reports between early 00s and 2019 put forward somewhat similar numbers: between 11 and 15 people per CCTV camera.

Based on recent estimates of London’s population, this would mean there are between 570,000 and 810,000 CCTV cameras in the City of London, with another 60,000 – 100,000 cameras in the wider urban area.

A conservative estimate, based on a conservative reading of BSIA’s report and on population estimates from 2017, would lead to around 500,000 CCTV cameras, expected to grow to more than 640,000 in 2020. We’re more than halfway there, so there should be 550,000 – 600,000 CCTV cameras in London today.

What Does the Future Hold for CCTV Cameras in London?

If we look at the public sector, and don’t go farther than Camden, it would appear that the golden age of CCTV growth has passed. Between government policy and the supporting local administration, there are few public areas in London that legitimately need CCTV surveillance and are not already under surveillance.

What we still see, and expect to continue to see, is continued growth in the private sector, and increased adoption of advanced features, such as Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and facial recognition. The UK police are “world leaders in the use of [ANPR] technology”, according to a study cited by the Police Foundation.

If the original growth models hold, population growth projections would suggest we can expect to see an additional 6,000 – 10,000 CCTV cameras every year for at least another 7 or 8 years.

What Causes This Growth?

The rapid growth of CCTV camera installations in London is testament not only to the growing security concerns, but also to the efficiency of CCTV cameras, or at the very least to their price-performance ratio.

Indeed, existing evidence paints a fairly diverse picture of CCTV efficiency. The evidence for efficiency is there, but it’s also clear that it’s affected by a great deal of factors, and CCTV effectiveness is not the same everywhere and in every scenario.

For example, studies have shown that CCTV installation resulted in significant decrease of crime rate, but only in some spaces. For instance, their deployment resulted in a “51% decrease in crimes committed in parking lots […] [and] a 23% decrease in crime on public transportation”, but yielded negligible results in other public spaces.

In order for CCTV cameras to be efficient in crime prevention and investigation, they need to be:

– Legally installed and operated

– Placed in a manner that makes them visible to potential offenders, but out of reach for determined offenders who might destroy them

– Correctly chosen and installed, so that they can provide clear pictures that investigators can work with.

The last two points have proven particularly stingy. The urban landscape of London is remarkably diverse, so all we have are best practices for installation, rather than a few well-understood “recipes”. Cameras mounted around corners, in bad ambient lighting conditions or with insufficient resolution have frustrated countless investigations over the years.

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CCTVs owe their success not only to their accessibility and reliability, but also to their flexibility. Many CCTV cameras in London use advanced features, such as ANPR, which enable them to be used for more than general surveillance.

Concerns about privacy or unnecessary spending have also been raised in all this time, especially with regard to surveillance in public spaces. These concerns are certainly not unfounded. During the last 8-10 years, public authorities have recognised this problem, and there have been some attempts to prevent unnecessary CCTV deployment. However, many privacy rights advocates consider these efforts to be insufficient, and warn against increasing public surveillance.

The current consensus of the security industry (and public authorities) leans towards responsible deployment, by encouraging private enterprises and public authorities to deploy CCTVs only where there is a legitimate need that cannot be fulfilled through other, less intrusive measures.

The good news is that this additional filter is not only a good deterrent of unnecessary CCTV deployment, but also a good deterrent of unnecessary spending. In other words, legal best practice also happens to be the same as management and fiscal best practice – a rare occurrence in our days.

As an example, the surveillance camera commissioner cites a case where a review of the local authorities, followed by the removal of ineffective cameras, saved GBP 250,000. Some local councils are reducing their surveillance budgets considerably and looking into alternative solutions, too.