Ealing in top ten most surveilled boroughs in UK

The top 10 most surveilled areas in the UK have been revealed - and 9 of them are in London. City of London topped the list with a plethora of 1,414 cameras per square mile, 999 more than second place. Ealing Council take sixth place.

A security provider applied for a Freedom of Information request with 425 councils in the UK asking how many CCTV cameras they ran. Expert Security UK was interested in discovering which cities, towns, and boroughs had the most amount of CCTV cameras relative to their size.

Of these requests, 291 of councils responded. This data was used to calculate the number of cameras per square mile. It was expected that some locations in London would make the top 10, however London Boroughs take up nine of the top spots. Top Ten areas:

City of London - 1,414 cameras per square mile

London Borough of Hackney - 415 cameras per sq mile

LB Lambeth - 89 cameras per sq mile

LB Tower Hamlets - 50 cameras per sq mile

LB Southwark - 46 cameras per sq mile

LB Ealing - 43 cameras per sq mile

LB Camden - 42 cameras per sq mile

Lincoln City Council - 34 cameras per sq mile

LB Kingston upon Thames - 33 cameras per sq mile

LB Haringey - 33 cameras per sq mile

Lincoln is the only area within the top 10 that isn’t in Greater London, with one camera per square mile more than Kingston upon Thames and Haringey.

One of the most interesting takeaways is the huge disparity between first, second, and third place. City of London leading by such a large margin makes sense when you consider that it’s one of the smallest areas to have its own council and is the heart of the capital city, so it’s only natural that it would have an extreme CCTV presence.

One place below and 999 cameras fewer is Hackney. This is worth mentioning because it has the highest number of CCTV cameras overall with 3,056 - almost double the amount of those in the City of London - however it missed out on the top spot on this list thanks to the larger area being covered.

Greater London areas dominate the list thanks to a combination of large amounts of cameras and much smaller area sizes than the majority of non-city councils. Lincoln breaks the mould due to a strong investment in CCTV over a smaller council area when compared to the rest of the country.

Image: https://www.expertsecurityuk.co.uk/news/page/2/