The Head of Policy, Governance and Information will be in attendance to provide the Panel with a statutory annual update on:
· RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers)
Recommendation: that Members
note the information provided.
Minutes:
The Head of Policy, Governance and Information provided the Annual Update on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIPA).
RIPA was the law governing the use of surveillance techniques by public authorities, including local authorities. RIPA required that when public authorities need to use covert techniques to obtain private information about someone, they only do so if surveillance was necessary, proportionate, and compatible with human rights. Typically, this related to suspected criminal activity that was likely to result in a custodial sentence of six months or more.
Middlesbrough Council would not undertake any activity defined with RIPA without prior authorisation in the legally prescribed form.
The Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) had overall responsibility for overt and covert surveillance, including:
• creation, communication and review of the policy;
• appointing the CCTV Single Point of Contact;
• appointing the Coordinating Officer (Auditor) for covert surveillance;
• ensuring the availability of appropriate authorisers for covert surveillance;
• raising corporate awareness of the policy and proper surveillance practices;
• assessing corporate compliance with the policy;
• providing professional guidance on all matters relating to surveillance;
• engagement with the Surveillance Camera Commissioner and the IPCO; and overseeing the implementation of any post-inspection action plans recommended or approved by the IPCO.
Directors and Heads of Service had a general responsibility to ensure compliance with operations as detailed in the Surveillance Policy. This included taking reasonable steps to protect health and safety including any necessary risk assessments.
There were a number of key roles in the process of approving and monitoring applications for both overt and covert surveillance. Depending on whether the surveillance was ‘overt’ or ‘covert’ would depend on the level of authorisation. Details of the surveillance key roles were included in the presentation and those roles included the CCTV Single Point of Contact (SPoC), Co-ordinating Officer (Auditor), Authorising Officers, Designated Person.
The Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO), overseen by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner (Sir Brian Leveson), was created under the IPA to provide independent oversight and authorisation of the use of investigatory powers by intelligence agencies, police forces and other public authorities.
Following the latest inspection by the IPCO in 2020 it was agreed that Middlesbrough Council would continue to maintain an overarching Surveillance Policy which covered CCTV, RIPA, non-RIPA covert surveillance and the surveillance of employees.
An annual Surveillance Report and Policy were produced to report on the surveillance activity of the Council to ensure that it complied with its strategic priorities and statutory obligations, that they were lawful, and that due regard was given to human rights and to data protection.
The Council always considered methods to gather information that did not require covert surveillance to be undertaken, in order to minimise the use of surveillance powers and therefore activity remained low.
Statistics with regard to the use of RIPA by the Council since 2015 were provided to the Scrutiny Panel. An annual review of activity was undertaken and signed off by the Mayor at a Single Member Decision meeting.
The Chair thanked the Officer for attending and providing the annual update.
AGREED that the information provided was received and noted.