IT’S a simple question, you would think.

But when Southampton City Council was asked to reveal how many CCTV cameras are watching residents in the city, it managed to miss out a staggering 930 of its 1,269 cameras.

The council told privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch that it had just 339, conveniently excluding cameras deployed around and inside buildings because it didn’t feel that they were classed as “open space”.

Most intrusive Meanwhile, Portsmouth City Council was named as the most intrusive authority in the country alongside Nottinghamshire after it revealed a network of 1,454 CCTV cameras.

Daily Echo: Southampton council accused over CCTV count

Dylan Sharpe, from Big Brother Watch, said: “We asked them (Southampton) a legitimate question. We expected them to tell us the truth. I’m not surprised but I’m disappointed.

They are spending public money installing these cameras. They are watching the general public. They should have been counted.”

Southampton City Council’s safer communities manager Linda Haitana claimed that the council stated “very clearly”

that the 339 referred to “public space cameras”, such as those in the city centre and car parks.

Big Brother Watch has revealed that the number of council-controlled cameras in the country has trebled in the past decade.

It warned that councils were creating enormous surveillance networks at great expense, with only “sketchy”

evidence that CCTV deterred or solved crimes.

It said that the quality of the footage was commonly too poor to be used in courts, the cameras were often turned off to save money, and control rooms were rarely manned 24-hours-a-day.

Ministers have said that CCTV is an “important tool” in crimefighting, but a Home Office study found that the cameras had a negligible effect on cutting crime.

A Metropolitan Police study found that only one crime is solved every year for every 1,000 CCTV cameras.

Southampton’s community safety boss Councillor Royston Smith said: “It’s a balance between community safety and erosion of civil liberties.

“We think we have the balance about right making our residents feel safer while not being overly intrusive.”