The new coalition Government has announced plans to limit CCTV, so Shropshire Star writer Alex James took a trip across Shropshire to see if he could evade the prying eyes of our Big Brother state. His findings make for startling reading.

There is no escape. Within seconds of leaving a Shrewsbury supermarket, my movements have been logged by innumerable cameras and computers.

I’ve filled the car, made a quick phone call and driven on to the A5 – and been clocked by a security camera, logged by BT and noted by Nationwide Building Society.

They all pinpoint my exact location at 2.20pm as I left the car park. The police have access to those records should they want them.

I’m only heading from the Shrewsbury office of the Shropshire Star to the Telford headquarters, but even on that short journey there is always someone watching.

The surveillance starts at the first stop, in Asda, where I withdraw some cash. I am filmed leaving my car by the supermarket security cameras. Heading into the town centre I am monitored by up to 31 more CCTV cameras and a further 80 are watching the local car parks.

The cameras really do work and beat bobbies are sensitive to their importance. While out in Shrewsbury, a Community Support Officer stopped me, without prompting, to ask why I was filming video footage of CCTV cameras.

Shropshire Council runs Shrewsbury town centre cameras, as well as cameras in Dawley, Oakengates and Wellington, and keep records on every image filmed.

Since the system was launched with 25 cameras going live in 2000, the number of arrests – a council term for when the police are called to an incident as a result of CCTV, but where an actual police arrest is not necessarily made – has decreased from 151 in 2006 to 90 in March this year; highlighting, says Shropshire Council’s environmental enforcement officer Dave Roberts, that the cameras do act as a deterrent.

“People know they’re there and might think twice about doing something,” he says. “We can be more proactive than reactive with the cameras and they certainly help lower crime.”

Before I leave Shrewsbury town centre I need to pop into a number of local shops and pubs, picking up provisions for the evening and meeting contacts. I am conscious that my movements are being monitored – this time by the eyes of staff. Shopwatch and Pubwatch signs are evident and, should they so choose, workers could warn other outlets about my presence by making a quick call.

The impact of the Shopwatch and Pubwatch schemes – which allow town businesses to contact the camera team if they spot anything suspicious, such as shoplifting or a drunken fight – is also borne out on paper.

In 2005 there were just 39 arrests as a result of the scheme. That has increased to 257 in 2010 – highlighting their increased effectiveness. “The co-operation is one of the reasons for the success,” adds Mr Roberts. Staff can also pre-empt crimes by monitoring the build-up.

“Staff are professionals and can spot when someone is about do something. That training pays off and sometimes you think ‘How did they know that was going to happen?’.”

Back on the main streets of Shrewsbury town centre, I find myself further scrutinised by cameras high above the pavement.

The cameras are monitored by 16 staff, who between them clocked 5,653 incidents in the 12 months up until March. That figure included 1,567 incidents related to people and premises, something which would be done after alarm activation for example, and 1,221 public order incidents. More dangerous crimes, such as drugs and weapons, are well down the list, which residents may find reassuring.

There were just 71 drug incidents logged, while offences with weapons were even lower at just 16.

A telling statistic is that the number of suspicious incidents recorded by the team has almost doubled since 2007 – from 362 to 656, while the police are also utilising the facilities more often.

Three years ago the CCTV team was asked to monitor the police at a scene just 156 times. That figure has now risen to 462 in the last 12 months.

Everything is noted by the team – the overall numbers are slightly down on the 2008-2009 figures but the council’s own statistics don’t take into account any police information as to whether any arrests were made.

A recent ‘Big Brother is Watching’ survey revealed that across the country there were 59,753 cameras, up from 21,000 10 years ago.

That’s a camera for every 1,000 people. That total excludes the hundreds of thousands of cameras used by private firms and central government.

The picture is similar in other parts of the county.

When I call a colleague at the Shropshire Star’s Ludlow office he’s on a mobile telephone near to Parkway library. “Can they see you too?” I joke. He answers in the affirmative. A camera is monitoring his every move.

That picture is replicated across the county with hundreds of cameras monitored by community partnerships.

There is little doubt the prime benefits of cameras are second to none. It’s the fact that almost everywhere you turn in the county you’re on camera which worries the sceptics.

I climb into my car, under the watchful gaze of another camera, and head onto the A5 and M54. Click, click, click. The number of cameras is bewildering.

In the short Shropshire section of the M54 alone, there are 13 traffic cameras which instantly note that your vehicle has joined the road from the A5 or M6. The cameras are the responsibility of the Highways Agency and spokesman Nathan Wallis says they are there purely to provide statistical details.

He says: “It’s very much used for a live image and once it’s gone it’s gone. We do not retain the images as standard, but can do if the police request them.”

I realise I wouldn’t have avoided detection if I’d used the trains or the bus, as both Arriva Buses and Wrexham & Shropshire Trains film passengers’ every move — all in the interests of safety.

Arriva spokesman Keith Myatt says the company is improving its system: “The intention is to have CCTV on all of the 700 buses we have in the Midlands. At the moment in the Midlands I would say about 90 per cent of the buses have CCTV. It provides greater security for customers, staff and other road users. We have the facility to hold on to the details, and download them. We work closely with the police, supplying footage of incidents, not necessarily taking place on the bus itself but elsewhere on the highway, which has led to arrests.”

It is a similar story on the trains where 75 per cent of the carriages on all three of Shropshire’s trains carry CCTV.

A Wrexham and Shropshire Trains spokesman says: “It is there for the protection of passengers and staff and also in a bid to prevent and solve crimes. It is only used for safety purposes. As far as I know there are no plans to extend it to all the carriages or onto the spare train.”

Debate

Even taxi firms are getting in on the act. Central Taxis — which has offices in Shrewsbury and Telford — is trialling the use of CCTV cameras in 25 of their cabs, with the move funded by Telford & Wrekin Council.

CCTV cameras are pivotal to the great surveillance debate, but private organisations also track our every movement.

The mobile phone call I made to my Ludlow colleague will reveal my exact whereabouts, at a particular time. Orange, BT, Nationwide and Nectar are among the many High Street names that can track our movements, building up patterns of mobile phone usage and spending habits.

An Orange spokesperson says the company has more than £17 million customers in the UK and adds that the company retains data for 12 months: “At Orange, we do not track our customers using their mobile handsets. The privacy of our customers is of the utmost importance to us and we take customer confidentiality extremely seriously.

“We have a number of handsets that are GPS enabled. However, we require that customers explicitly opt in to use any services that require GPS technology.” It’s a similar story over at BT, which keeps the records indefinitely for billing purposes.

A spokesperson says: “We don’t monitor computer use. However, the police may contact a service provider if they have ‘probable cause’ (that a crime has been committed) to get a judge to sign a warrant under a section of a specific act.”

Meanwhile Nectar says it retains some information but doesn’t pass it to third parties other than those in the same loyalty card scheme.

Nationwide also holds customer details but says: “We will only disclose a customer’s personal information to other people or organisations where we have the customer’s consent to do so, where we have sold their product to the customer, or where we are required or permitted to do so by law.”

Logged

As I end my journey, I pass a yellow-box police speed camera in Ketley. My movements have been logged dozens of times.

Whether by camera or by action, our journeys and movements are logged dozens of times every day, by different organisations.

It was George Orwell, in his book 1984, who said: “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.” He is getting closer to the mark with every passing year.