Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of increasing the use of CCTV cameras in parks on anti-social behaviour.

It is for Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners, as operational leaders and elected local representatives respectively, to decide how best to respond to local priorities and to help ensure the police have the resources they need; we have given them the biggest funding increase in a decade and are enabling policing to recruit 20,000 additional officers over the next three years.

The Metropolitan Police Service funding will be up to £3.24bn in 2022/23, an increase of up to £169.3m when compared to 2021/22. As at 30 June 2022, the Metropolitan Police Service has recruited 2,952 additional Police Uplift Programme officers against a total three-year allocation of 4,557 officers.

Provision of CCTV is a local matter, but the Safer Streets Fund (SSF) includes the delivery of situational crime prevention measures, such as improved street lighting and increased CCTV coverage, as possible funded interventions to prevent anti-social behaviour (ASB), neighbourhood crime and violence against women and girls. There is strong evidence to show simple solutions like increased CCTV can help to prevent crimes before they happen, relieving the strain on police and empowering communities and individuals to feel safer when they are out in public.

On 25 July the Government announced a further £50 million funding for 111 projects through Round Four of the SSF; 83 of these projects have a primary focus on tackling ASB, using a wide range of interventions including: outreach and diversionary activities; educational programmes; behavioural change campaigns; as well as additional CCTV cameras and improved streetlighting.