Town hall snoops strike again as recycling centre staff are given Robocop-style head cameras

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Poole council said the cameras, which are worn on the head, were being used for one month to protect staff at the Nuffield Household Waste and Recycling Centre after they suffered abuse.

In one incident an irate member of the public drove a car at one of its employees, the council said.

A Poole council worker wears the headcam issued to staff at the recycling centre

Councillor Don Collier said: 'Abusive and aggressive behaviour towards members of staff is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated. By introducing the headcam trial, we are hoping to provide the staff at the Nuffield site with an additional element of protection.'

But the council faced criticism from civil liberty groups. Privacy campaign group NO2ID spokesman Michael Parker said: 'Instances of unnecessary surveillance whether covert or obvious only increase the sense of unease that people feel about the society they are living in.'

Comments posted on the Poole Daily Echo website also slammed the trial, with one saying: 'This is just another way for Poole council to spy on us.'

Another said: 'I bet these cameras will be used to prosecute people who happen to put a bit of metal in the wood skip, etc., and have nothing to do with security.'

Staff at the recycling centre are clearly marked as wearing a recording device. The Video Vest W3000 has two cameras - one worn as headgear and a second attached to the lapel of the reflective vest.

The headcam records continuously but the memory is wiped clean at 30-second intervals unless the wearer activates a function to store the previous 30 seconds.

A portable unit kept in a pouch on the vest stores the image and sound recordings and provides instant playback.

It is not the first time Poole Council has come under fire for its surveillance tactics.

The Daily Mail reported in April how the council used special anti-terrorist powers to track a couple who it wrongly suspected of faking an address to get a child into a school catchment area.