This is a serious question and it is one that, to date, the Council has refused to answer.

It comes in the wake of significant national concern on the growth of the number of  employees of Councils and of Councils’ executive agencies who have been given the power to enter private homes without the consent of the owner, without a warrant having been issued and, in many cases, with the use of force if required.

The individual’s right to privacy and the surveillance state

Alex Deane, Director of Big Brother Watch, says: ‘Once a man;s home was his castle. Today the Big Brother state wants to inspect, regulate amd standardise the inside our homes.

‘Councils are dishing out powers of entry within their Council for their own ease, without giving due thought to the public’s right to privacy and the potential for abuse.

‘There needs to bea much closer eye kept on the number of officers granted the right to barge into private premises without a warrant’.

For Argyll has have campaigned since its beginning on the need to be watchful on the extent to which he UK has become and is increasing its capacity as a surveillance state.

People in the UK have a notion, born of mythologised accounts, of what living under a surveillance state is like. We think of the former Russia and East Germany, countries that few of us actually knew or know today. we imagine nations living in fear and endlessly watchful. And we think that this is nothing like life in the UK – so we’re OK.

But it was never really like that there either. People there, too, thought it had nothing to do with them and lived in a normal oblivion to their vulnerabilities – until they discovered that it did indeed have a lot to do with them.

The UK has complacently watched a series of pieces of legislation enacted – there are now 1,043 of them – which permit state inspectors to enter private homes and premises with neither consent nor warrant.

The Big Brother Watch report

The privacy campaign organisation, Big Brother Watch, has been conducting the first ever survey of the extent to which local authorities across the UK have been dishing out such powers to their direct and indirect employees.

The picture is disturbing. The formal tally shows 14, 793 officers across UK local authorities empowered in this way. But 27% of the Councils refused to answer the question so an average of the figures available would suggest that there are at least 20,000 of such officials loose in the UK.

Just over half of Scotland’s local authorities responded to the request for information made under Freedom of Information legislation – 19 out of our 32 Councils.

Of those that responded, 3 were in the top 10 Councils across the UK in terms of numbers of officers given such powers of entry. They were:

• Glasgow City Council in second place, with 483 officers empowered. (The highest was Northamptonshire County Council with 499 employees free to operte in thi way, so Glasgow wasn’t far off the mark.)
• North Lanarkshire Council in 4th place, with 350 officers licensed to enter.
• Aberdeen City Council in equal 10th place, with 129 uninvited but legal home visitors.

The 19 Scottish Councils responding to the request showed a total tally of 1,652 empowered officers – but those refusing to respond included Edinburgh Dundee and Fife, whose potential numbers of such officers are high.

Argyll and Bute Council

Among those Councils refusing to respond was our own Argyll & Bute Council. The Council alreadyhas work to do to retrieve a reputation tainted by its improper if legal use of anti-terrorism legislation to monitor the activities of a social housing tenant.

It is diasppointing and disturbing that the Council has not been able:

• to supply the information
• to offer a reassurance that it doe not make use of powers of entry legislation
• or to indicate that it has very few directly or indirectly employed officers granted the right to use such powers.

While the inevitable assmption must be that the Council has indeed dished out these powers to its officers – and probably to more than we would like to know, there may be another explanation.

Poorly organised Councils which do not keep proper records or keep records inefficiently, may well have to allocate staff for significant periods of time in order to find – for themselves as well as for others – just how many officers they have granted the right to use powers of entry,

Either way, we need to know the true position of Argyll and Bute Council on this matter – and possibly on the state of its record keeping.

Key problems

In addition to the failure to protect the individual’s right to privacy, the current situation has some major problems:

• The first is that the profuse legislation lacks clarity. As the Big Brother Watch report, Barging In, says: ‘With over 1,000 separate laws permitting the state to enter your home, it has become possible for a local authority officer to treat any number of situations as justifying the use of a power of entry; conversely, it has become increasingly difficult for a member of the public to know their own rights and avenues to redress when such a power is used’.
• The second is that increasing the number of officers in local authorities ‘capable of entering private premises without requiring either a police escort or a warrant’, there are too many to train properly or keep track of. Barging In says: ‘such officers are often untraceable on the council’s website and may be unvetted and poorly trained for the task of entering private property’.
• If Council;s record keeping is poor, there is no ability to dosciver and to trace exactly which officer has been given power of entry for what reasons and under which law. This means that the possibilities for abuse by officers licensed in this way are legion. Such a situation is irresponsible in the extreme.

It is not reassuring to know that incidents where powers of entry have been used include justificiations as legal but as trivial and unnecessary as:

• To see if pot plants have plant pests do or do not have a ‘plant passport’ (Plant Health Order 2005).
• To check the energy ratings on refrigerators (Energy Information Household Refrigerators and Freezers Regulations 2004).
• Surveying the home and garden to see if hedges are too high (Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003).
• Inspecting a property to ensure illegal or unregulated hypnotism is not taking place (Hypnotism Act 1952).

For Argyll’s request

For Argyll has now requested information on the matter from Argyll and Bute Council. We have said:

‘There has been a national focus on the rise of local authority staff possessing and given ‘powers of entry’ – meaning the authority, established in legislation, to enter a private home without either the consent of the owner or a warrant.

‘We are aware that the privacy campaign group,  Big Brother Watch, asked every local authority in the UK, under Freedom of Information legislation, for an account of:

1. The total number of people within your Council and its executive agencies who were granted the right to use powers of entry legislation to enrter a pricvate property, or were able to confer that right upo another agency, on Monday 15th June 2009.
2. If it exists, a copy of of any internal guidance on how powers of entry are granted to officers / agencies.

‘We note that Argyll and Bute Council was one of the 27% of UK  councils which made no response to this request.

‘The Council already has work to do to retrieve a reputation tainted by a swashbuckling interpretation of anti-terrorism legislation in its surveillance of social housing tenants.

‘With this record, it it is of even greater public interest than it would be in any case, to know what the Council is doing on the ‘powers of entry’ front.

‘We are therefore asking:

• for the information outlined in 1 and 2 above;
• for a statement from the Council on why it chose not to respond to the Freedom of Information request made by Big Brother Watch

‘Should this refusal to respond have been made on the grounds of the cost of staff time to collate the information (which is, on the evidence of other Councils’ responses, highly disputable) – we are asking for. at the very least, summary information on:

‘Whether or not Argyll & Bute Council and its executive agencies have staff empowered to use this right of entry?
An approximate indication of the numbers of staff involved – on the basis of:

• Below 10
• 11 – 25
• 26 – 50
• 51 – 75
• 76 – 100
• Over 100.

‘This is an important issue for residents in Argyll and Bute – as it is for any residents of the UK.

‘It is disturbing that our own Council has been unable to provide the necessary information on such activities; or to provide the simple assurance that its direct and indirect representatives do not employ such powers; or to offer a reassurance that only a tiny number of direct and indirect representatives are so empowered.

‘We look forward to hearing from you on this and are publishing an item on the matter and our request to the Council’.

We will report on the outcome of our request.

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