South Lanarkshire Council has the third-highest number of CCTV cameras in the UK.
According to a new survey conducted by Ironmongery Direct, South Lanarkshire ranks third in the UK for local authority installed CCTV cameras, making it the highest in Scotland for council-run surveillance.
The council has installed 2154 security cameras to date, and it ranks behind the London Borough of Hackney, which is first with 3119 CCTV cameras and the London Borough of Hillingdon, which comes in second with 2304.
The survey was conducted through Ironmongery Direct using Freedom of Information requests to ask local authorities throughout the UK to reveal how many CCTV cameras they operate and how this compared to three years ago.
The survey also revealed that there are currently 108,533 public CCTV cameras controlled by UK local authorities, which is an increase of 14 per cent from 2019, when it was 95,573.
Joanne Forbes, Head of Property Services at South Lanarkshire Council, said: “Of the 2024 CCTV cameras installed across South Lanarkshire, only 76 are in the public domain and are heavily regulated to assist with public protection.
“The remaining cameras are not used in this way but are installed at 245 of our properties and are used to ensure the security of our newly built and modernised schools, offices and other council assets.
“There has been no increase in the number of cameras deployed to public space areas since 2019 and our current level of coverage is kept under continual review.”
A total of 69 per cent of local authorities have increased their surveillance with 16 councils more than doubling their CCTV presence.
It also concluded that the UK is the third most surveilled country in the world.
Grant Fulton, from Corps Monitoring, said: “A combination of factors has led to the rise in CCTV cameras. Broadband has become a commonplace feature of our world, with wider-than-ever availability and at increasing connectivity speeds, while the cost of CCTV equipment has reduced significantly over the last decade.
"And as mobile tech has developed alongside this, having a 3G or more enabled phone has enabled convenient usability at your fingertips.
“With these advancements, we’re also now heavily reliant on captured visuals – our news, our stories, our lives are all captured on video so being evidence driven is the norm.
"Naturally, when it comes to the people and asset protection, CCTV cameras play a massive role; they are our eyes everywhere all at once.”
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