Issue - meetings
Covert investigation under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
Meeting: 21/10/2014 - Standards Advisory Committee (Item 3)
3 Covert investigation under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 PDF 137 KB
Consider and comment upon the information provided in the report.
Minutes:
Meic Sullivan-Gould (Interim Monitoring Officer (IMO) drew Members’ attention to the maps referred to at paragraph 3.25 of the report, in respect of RIPA activity relating touting and underage sales predominantly in the Brick Lane area, which had been Tabled, a copy of which would be interleaved with the minutes.
Meic Sullivan-Gould introduced and highlighted key points in the report, which provided the SAC with information on the Authority’s authorisation of covert investigations under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 and enforcement activity arising from these, together with outcomes of independent inspections of the RIPA arrangements operated by the Authority, in accordance with the oversight role for elected Members recommended by the Home Office in relation to Part 2 of RIPA 2000.
A comprehensive discussion followed which focused on the following points:-
· Serious concern expressed regarding the lack in take up of RIPA authorised surveillance by the Authority and the rationale behind this. Comment that there were many serious issues in the borough e.g. Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB), fly tipping, unlawful street vending, underage sales of different product, fraud, touting and breaches of licences, which posed serious problems for residents, and generated many Member Enquiries, which might be mitigated through the use of covert surveillance to provide evidence to deal with the perpetrators of such offences; the lack of such evidence often being cited as a reason why such issues couldn’t be addressed. Although proper scrutiny of such surveillance was appropriate, given a population of approaching 350-500 thousand the reporting of only 3 applications by the Authority for RIPA authorisation of covert surveillance in 2013/14, appeared to show that residents of the borough were being let down by the Authority not exploring the use of powers available to it for their benefit. The lack of evidence cited at Licensing Sub-Committees in relation to alleged breaches of licences and the levels of ASB in communal and public areas known to elected Members which continued unchecked appeared to show a lack of joined up working by the Council to provide surveillance evidence to address the problems. The advice of the IMO was sought and given as to which committee should be examining this and in particular the Officer rationale for not using covert surveillance with RIPA authorisation in relation to the Council’s priorities for RIPA outlined in the SAC report. Meic Sullivan-Gould responded that paras 3.6 – 3.8 of the report set out that the policy and priorities of the Authority for use of RIPA surveillance had been agreed by Cabinet in October 2012 and comprised an appendix to the Authority’s Enforcement Policy, which was due for review by the Executive in 2015. It would be appropriate for the representations made by SAC members and Ward Members to inform the review process, however it was an Executive function to determine what the Council’s Enforcement Policy comprised of. The Chair also commented that the role of SAC was to oversee the appropriate use of RIPA and the points raised were a ... view the full minutes text for item 3