How Many Surveillance Cameras are there in London?

Have you ever stopped and wondered how many cameras have recorded you on an average day during, for example, a regular trip to the shops or your usual commute to work? Well the answer may surprise you if you live in London or some of the other CCTV hotspots around the world.

The most recent estimates tell us that there are at least half a million CCTV cameras in London alone. Over recent years there has been a huge increase in these for several reasons including the price of the technology plummeting and the legal and insurance requirements placed on many businesses to help improve their security. Domestically, CCTV also helps deter crime, certainly in London where crimes rates are often higher, and the population density is greater.

To help ensure the safety of travellers, there are over 15,500 cameras in current use in the underground alone. Within King’s Cross and St Pancras there are over 400 cameras alone recording around 80 million travellers per year.

To answer the original question, it’s estimated that the average Londoner is captured on CCTV around 300 times per day (the London Underground footage is kept for an astonishing 2 weeks!)

But what about the cost of installing such a huge number of CCTV cameras? Estimates put this cost at over £300 million.

Worldwide the estimates are that there are a staggering 25 million CCTV cameras currently in operation with Britain accounting for between 4 and 5.9 million of these in total. The very high percentage of London CCTV cameras is also reflected in the surprising fact that Wandsworth borough in London has more CCTV cameras than Boston, Dublin, Johannesburg and San Francisco put together.

But who makes these cameras that are installed all over the world? It turns out there are thousands of different commercial & monitoring camera manufacturers in the world with China manufacturing the vast majority of the components that go into these devices. The most well know camera manufacturers include companies such as Bosch, Canon, Cisco, D-Link, Extreme CCTV, GE Security, Honeywell, Logitech, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, & Toshiba. Lesser known manufacturers include Visio Probe who manufacture cameras such as their industrial inspection camera or their remote inspection camera.