News from Siân Berry: Mayor must fix his public spaces guidance

The Mayor needs to ban intrusive facial recognition cameras, run by unaccountable private companies in public spaces, Sian Berry AM has urged.

The Green Assembly Member is calling for a number of changes in the final version of the Draft Public London Charter. These include a democratic process for changing rules governing public spaces, restrictions on ticketed events and closures, and more information and transparency from the GLA.

She is also calling on the Mayor to use these new planning rules to protect the privacy and rights of Londoners when it comes to the use of facial recognition in private CCTV systems. [1]

The draft proposals come after a campaign led by Sian Berry since 2016, and backed by the London Assembly in 2017, to prevent private owners of public spaces from imposing arbitrary rules on behaviour, such as children playing and busking. [2]

Following concerns about the use of facial recognition by private landowners, Sian has questioned the Mayor about this. [3] The Mayor has said that Data Protection Act 2018 provides special protections to biometric information, but he did not caution against private companies collecting this data in the first place.

Sian Berry AM said:

The Mayor’s draft guidance fails to ban facial recognition in these spaces, allowing Londoners to be invasively monitored in the public areas they use in their everyday lives – the places they walk through to get to shops and their homes, and areas where they work and relax.

The Public London Charter is a real chance for the Mayor to stop owners of new public space from using intrusive surveillance technology, including live facial recognition. I am very disappointed his draft does not do this, and I hope that he will listen to Londoners and fix this in the final policy.

He also needs to improve the democratic processes used to make any changes to rules for new spaces after planning permission is given, and publish full data from the GLA on the public spaces governed by this charter.

Londoners need more control over our public areas and we must protect the rights of all the people who use them. Our public spaces are a central part of life in the city. Today I am asking people to join me and defend them.”

The public consultation on the Public London Charter is open online until Friday 15 January 2021. Sian is asking Londoners to take five minutes to ask for these improvements before it is too late.

Sian has fought for London-wide planning rules for new private public spaces for over four years. While the Mayor has been dragging his heels over publication of the Charter, Siân has been driving cross-party support for improved guidance on the processes needed to protect Londoners in public spaces, and fighting to improve the transparency of the rules governing these areas.

The public consultation can be found at:

/programmes-strategies/planning/implementing-london-plan/london-plan-guidance-and-spgs/public-london-charter-consultation-draft