A Bristol school has defended its use of covert surveillance cameras in a public park, saying it installed them to catch people damaging their controversial fence. But local residents and campaigners fighting the school’s takeover of the open space have cried foul, after discovering the cameras.
Cotham School said it installed the hidden cameras at the suggestion of the police after repeated criminal damage on the fence around its playing fields at the Stoke Lodge open space in Stoke Bishop. And the school claimed the cameras have worked - and captured ten separate incidents of the same person damaging the fence.
But a campaign group of local residents who use the Stoke Lodge open space have cried foul, and after discovering the cameras said it was a ‘matter of grave concern’ that the school had installed them. The group, called We Love Stoke Lodge, said the cameras were not a ‘proportionate or justified’ response to the continuing issues with the open space and the controversial fence.
Read more: Man fixing vandalised Stoke Lodge fence told it would be 'opened again'
The saga of Cotham School and the fence inside the Stoke Lodge open space in Stoke Bishop dates back more than 12 years, and began when the council-owned land was given to Cotham School to use as a playing field on a 125 year lease. In January 2019, local residents tried and ultimately failed to physically stop Cotham School erecting a fence around most of the park, to enclose the area used as school playing fields, and since then a bitter battle over the fence and the status of the land has continued.
There have been claims and counter-claims, legal battles, appeals and applications to the council, and in the park itself - ongoing issues with the fence and the signs put up by the school being repeatedly damaged. In April 2020, more than a year after the fence was put up, Cotham School applied for planning permission to install a pole with a CCTV camera on it, much to the fury of local residents, who objected in their hundreds. The application is still yet to be decided by Bristol City Council.
But today, Wednesday, October 5, the We Love Stoke Lodge issued a statement saying they had uncovered two covert cameras hidden in a junction box near the entrance to the Stoke Lodge playing fields, and called on Cotham School to explain themselves. The We Love Stoke Lodge statement said the presence of the cameras was 'of serious concern', and appeared to break the school’s own policies on data protection and CCTV cameras. The We Love Stoke Lodge group said the move was particularly concerning, given the school had not yet obtained planning permission for a more overt CCTV pole.
“It appears that the school has now taken matters into its own hands and installed hidden surveillance equipment,” the statement said. “The box is positioned close to the pedestrian gate nearest to Stoke Lodge House and the children’s play park. The cameras are recording users of the field including young children and families, teenagers socialising, sports club members and others.
“Of greatest concern is the fact that Cotham School’s Data Protection Impact Assessment for CCTV specifically states that the ‘school will not use covert cameras’ and ‘all camera locations will be clearly visible’,” the statement added.
A spokesperson for We Love Stoke Lodge added: “This is obviously a matter of serious concern for all users of the playing fields whose right to respect for private and family life has been compromised without their knowledge. The school’s impact assessment appears to suggest that the reason they want CCTV at Stoke Lodge is to protect their perimeter fence but so far as most residents are concerned, 24/7 surveillance is not a proportionate or justified response.
“In any case, these cameras are pointing at the field, not the fence. It’s yet another reason why the fence needs to come down as soon as our application for Town or Village Green status is granted.
“Since Cotham School is in breach of its own DPIA, that document can’t be relied on in relation to other matters, such as who is viewing the images they record, or for what purposes. We have no information about whether covert CCTV is also being used on the main school site, by whom or for what purposes.
“We invite Cotham School to confirm and publish evidence that it has appropriate authorisation in place to conduct directed surveillance under the RIPA 2000 in relation to these cameras specifically. We also invite the school to clarify its position on the use of covert surveillance generally,” the We Love Stoke Lodge group added.
Cotham School quickly issued a statement of its own, admitting to installing the covert cameras in January this year. The school said it did so after meeting the police to discuss ongoing incidents of vandalism at Stoke Lodge, which the school described as ‘persistent criminal damage’. The school said there were more than 25 separate reports of criminal damage of the school’s property at Stoke Lodge between July 2018 and December 2021.
“This disappointingly takes vital school funds away from the education of our students to cover the cost of the necessary repair to ensure that our students have an offsite sports provision which is able to be secured and remains fit for purpose,” the school statement said.
“In January 2022, we met with representatives of Avon and Somerset police following an influx of incidents and were advised to consider the use of covert CCTV monitoring to try and catch the perpetrators of these crimes. Avon and Somerset Police were highly supportive that we try to draw these ongoing issues to a close and suggested the use of either wildlife cameras or covert CCTV monitoring of the crime hotspots,” the school added.
Cotham School said it installed the cameras in January 2022 and then updated its own Data Protection Impact Assessment for CCTV to ‘remove any sections relating to not using covert CCTV, to allow the use of these cameras’. This move was backed by the school’s governing body, the statement said, who ‘would like to see the ongoing criminal damage and waste of public funds be brought to a conclusion’.
The school said the cameras were ‘successful’ in recording ‘ten separate incidents of criminal damage to our property by a single member of the public’. “The damage to our property from this one individual alone has cost us in excess of £4,000,” the school statement said. “We presented this evidence to Avon and Somerset Police and this member of the public was arrested by the police and given a conditional caution for the criminal damage committed at our playing fields.
Unfortunately, this individual has breached their conditional caution and continues to cause a nuisance at our school playing fields and we will continue to seek further support from Avon and Somerset Police to draw this individual's persistent, disruptive and costly actions to a conclusion,” the school said, adding that the two cameras discovered by We Love Stoke Lodge were the only two in the green space, and will ‘remain fully operational’ to allow us to continue to collect evidence to pass to the police as the criminal damage to our property continues to persist’.
Bristol Live has approached Avon and Somerset police about the issue and is awaiting a response.
Read more: Stoke Lodge Playing Fields, a timeline
Dec 2018 - Hundreds protest on Stoke Lodge playing fields over fence plan
Dec 2018 - Playing field signs repeatedly damaged
Dec 2018 - School told to take down ‘offensive’ sign
Dec 2018 - Eight year legal battle has cost school £100,000 in legal fees
Jan 2019 - Local residents physically stop contractors erecting fence
Jan 2019 - Mayor Marvin Rees says he ‘doesn’t have the power’ to stop fence
Mar 2019 - Fence around playing fields is completed
Apr 2020 - Damage to Stoke Lodge fence will cost "thousands of pounds" to fix
Mar 2021 - Inspector recommends Town Green applications are rejected
Follow the latest updates on this story and others like it here.
