Written question asked by Baroness Featherstone (Liberal Democrat) on Thursday, 26 July 2007, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 8 October 2007. It was answered by Lord Coaker (Labour) on Wednesday, 10 October 2007 on behalf of the Home Office.

CCTV: Costs

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the cost to the public purse was of (a) installing and (b) maintaining CCTV surveillance in London in each of the last five years, broken down by borough.

Answer: No data on the costs of publicly-funded CCTV cameras operating on a local or on a national level are centrally held by the Home Office.Previously, closed circuit television (CCTV) has been provided using a range of national and local funding streams. The principal fund has been the crime reduction programme from 1999 to 2003 which invested £170 million in CCTV schemes.Currently, crime reduction funding is allocated directly to local authorities through the Safer Stronger Communities Fund These funds finance a variety of interventions, including CCTV, to tackle local crime priorities.Funding allocations are local decisions and are the responsibility of individual partnerships.

Secondary information