By Ben Lynch

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A west London borough’s CCTV infrastructure is going to be boosted with technologies including facial recognition and AI-assisted cameras.

Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s Cabinet approved more than £3million in funding on Monday night to “enhance” the local authority’s CCTV network. The borough already has more cameras per person than anywhere else in the UK with more than 2,000 currently operating.

The additional funding, which comes as a £4.5m, four-year investment programme nears completion, is intended to “improve crime detection and prevention, as well as [putting] additional cameras in parks”, according to a council report. “This will elevate H&F to an exceptionally advanced level of CCTV crime detection capability,” officers say.

The £3.2m will be spent across a three-year period, starting this financial year and ending in 2027/28. It is expected that the investment will come from existing and future developer contributions, plus income from boroughs which contract CCTV services from Hammersmith and Fulham.

The Cabinet paper details how the live facial recognition cameras, which will “match faces against a defined police database in real time”, are to be installed at identified crime hotspots.

Two cameras are proposed at each of the 10 locations, including outside Shepherd’s Bush Market on Uxbridge Road, Wood Lane outside Westfield and on King Street. It is made clear that introducing facial recognition cameras is “heavily contingent on police support”, though initial conversations have reportedly been positive.

The Met Police currently has one pilot site for static live facial recognition cameras in Croydon, analysis of which is expected this autumn.

There will also be AI capability for 500 cameras. According to the report, this will “enable more efficient video playback; automatic vehicle tracking and enable use of other tools that will make more effective use of the camera system by increasing CCTV operator efficiency and response times.

The report states: “Importantly, this will enable Retrospective Facial Recognition (RFR) across H&Fs camera network, allowing CCTV footage to be automatically searched to efficiently track the routes taken by criminals across the borough.”

The Cabinet paper also recommended drones be introduced as an “enforcement aid”, subject to approval from the Civil Aviation Authority.

Cllr Stephen Cowan, Council Leader, told members: “This council is pioneering the use of artificial intelligence to identify and recognise people who have committed crime or antisocial behaviour to a greater degree.

“As we know, the criminal justice system is broken. It has been broken for a long time. It’s one of the many consequences of austerity, and as a consequence it is extremely difficult at times for the courts to get people taken through the courts.

“Having better evidence, having evidence that goes above and beyond, is just one of the things that we are aiming to do.”

Later in the discussion, he said: “The fight against organised crime has become more sophisticated than ever before. It is totally international and its victims are often the most vulnerable people in our community. Therefore prevention of risk of crime, particularly protecting children at risk of being groomed into crime, has been a key part of our operation.”

In a Social Inclusion and Community Safety Policy and Accountability Committee meeting last year Neil Thurlow, now Assistant Director Community Safety Resilience and CCTV at the council, suggested facial recognition would not be introduced to the network, though that AI would. The latest move reverses the position on facial recognition.

He confirmed the programme would comply with the “highest ethics”, adding: “It’s not going to be used for spyware or anything like that at all.”

In a recent interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), Cllr Rowan Ree, Cabinet Member for Finance and Reform, said he was supportive of the idea of rolling out AI to the borough’s CCTV network.

“Crime is the big issue that we’re tackling at the moment and we will use any tools that we can get our hands on to help with that,” he said. “That doesn’t only mean using AI in CCTV, it means boosting our CCTV presence even further. We’ve got the most comprehensive CCTV network in the country in terms of camera per resident, but we want to go further.”