What is a CCTV (public space surveillance) licence?
A public space surveillance licence is the SIA licence required to operate CCTV equipment to monitor public space in a way that identifies or records the activities of individuals.
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<a href="https://secureoptix.co.uk/glossary/cctv-licence">What is a CCTV (public space surveillance) licence?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://secureoptix.co.uk">SecureOptix</a>
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</figure>The trigger is proactive monitoring of people rather than the presence of cameras. Reviewing recorded footage after an incident, or having cameras nobody watches, does not generally engage the licence in the way live targeted monitoring does.
It is commonly missed because CCTV duties get added to an existing guarding role informally. An officer asked to watch the monitors during quiet periods may have moved into licensable activity nobody decided to authorise.
It sits alongside data protection obligations that apply regardless of licensing. The licence governs who may operate the system; separate rules govern what may be recorded, retained and disclosed.
In practice
A town centre control room, three operators on a shift.
Two hold public space surveillance licences. The third is an administrator who covers breaks, and during those breaks she watches the monitors and directs the camera when something catches her eye.
Proactively using the system to identify or track people is the licensable activity, and it is the directing that matters rather than the sitting. Watching a screen because somebody has to be in the room is a different thing from operating the system.
Break cover is where this almost always goes wrong, because it is the one part of a rota nobody writes down.
What goes wrong in practice
- Monitoring duties added informally to a guarding role with no licence check.
- The licence obtained while the data protection obligations are overlooked entirely.
- Assuming no licence is needed because the site is private, when the space monitored is public.