Big Brother council caught spying on residents 17 times

It comes after Poole Borough Council snooped on a number of its residents, including  a couple they wrongly suspected of lying about living in the catchment area for a particular school.

Jenny Paton and her partner Tim Joyce were snooped on for nearly three weeks after their council  wrongly suspected they had lied about living near to Lilliput First School.

Jenny Paton and Tim Joyce were outraged to find that their council had spied on them for three weeks and it is now being investigated

The same council has made similar checks on two other families in the last year.

And in total the council claimed that it had carried out surveillance on 17 separate occasions under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) since 2005.

Miss Paton, from Parkstone, said: "We all know there has to be scrutiny of applications but they could carry it out without resorting to anti-terror legislation and spying.

"The fact they are going to continue this is outrageous.

"I feel that this kind of scrutiny is hugely disproportionate to the circumstances to being able to scrutinise a school application.

"They could have come back to us and asked for utility bills, they could have come back to us and asked for telephone bills instead."

The couple had applied to have their three-year-old daughter accepted into Lilliput CE First School - described by inspectors as "outstanding" and heavily over-subscribed - which one of their children already attends.

The confusion started because the couple has two addresses and they waited until after the council deadline for school applications had passed before moving from one address to the other.

However the council has also used the powers to determine if fishermen were illegally gathering shellfish in Poole Harbour, to detect underage alcohol sales, to find out who damaged a barrier and who vandalised a door entry system.

The powers have also been used to detect neighbourhood nuisance and anti-social behaviour, substantiate benefit claims and monitor suspected drug dealers.

But the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has now expressed 'concerns' over the council's use of covert surveillance.

David Smith, deputy commissioner at the ICO, said: 'The ICO has some concerns about the surveillance that has taken place in Poole.

'It seems that in at least some cases the surveillance has involved the covert collection of personal information about those individuals under scrutiny.

'We will be contacting Poole Borough Council to ensure that the way in which personal information about those under surveillance has been collected and subsequently processed meets the requirements of the Data Protection Act.

'We will also be liaising with the Surveillance Commissioner, the regulator for the exercise of RIPA powers, on this issue.