Getting a picture of police heavies

30-Jan-2012 - Last updated on 11-Mar-2017 at 18:21 GMT

I have great sympathy for Michael Kheng (Operator in CCTV dispute, the PMA 19 January) in his dispute with police in Lincolnshire, who asked for footage in connection with a burglary that he refused to hand over without more specific information.

He is right that data protection requirements limit how he can distribute these tapes and he is sticking to his guns, as I would expect. But for the police to now seek a review of the licence smacks of heavy-handedness and even bullying.

A review is appropriate only when the conduct of the premises is called into question in relation to a breach of conditions or something that undermines the licensing objectives.

If the police cite the ‘prevention of crime’ objective as a reason for the review, they are on shaky ground, because in my view this must apply to crime directly connected with and relevant to the conduct of the premises themselves.

The actual offence was committed well away from the pub and could not have been known to the premises licence holder or his staff.

To extend it to the unwitting serving of potential criminals is a step too far. This means that if anyone who used a pub went on to commit a crime somewhere else, the licensee is somehow implicated in that and his licence is under threat.

There have been other instances where police have requested a general sight of CCTV footage taken in the pub and have proceeded against the licensee for a misdemeanour they have spotted.

In almost every case of a licence application these days, police ask for CCTV conditions to be included, not principally for the benefit of the licensee in preventing crime but so they can have better surveillance of the locality themselves.

Fortunately, this has been resisted by some licensing committees when they consider there is no immediate need for it as a licence condition. But pressure is mounting to make the installation virtually a ‘mandatory condition’ these days, which is sometimes hard to resist if it means stalling the grant of a licence.

This refusal to comply is not obstructing the police — it is maintaining a balance between the rights of the individual and the operational requirements of the force. Sometimes it is necessary to take a stand and set some limits to prevent a power being exercised too strongly.