A council yesterday admitted using laws designed to track serious criminals to spy on a family for nearly three weeks to find out if they were lying about living in a school catchment area.
The family are angry after Poole borough council, in Dorset, revealed it had followed them and watched them at home to check whether they lived in the correct area for one of their three children, a three-year-old girl, to be accepted at a local school.
The council used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to draw up a list of the mother's movements from February 13 to March 3, showing the times and exact routes of school runs with her children. She told the Bournemouth Echo that the record, shown to her by a school admissions manager, included detailed notes such as "female and three children enter target vehicle and drive off" and "curtains open and all lights on in premises".
The authority said it had used such "physical surveillance" on six occasions under RIPA, which allows councils to carry out surveillance only if they suspect serious crimes, including terrorism.
The mother, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "I have had nothing to say how long the information will be kept for, who holds it and what the implications of having an RIPA order executed against you are. I'm absolutely incensed. To be following us around for nearly three weeks, apart from being very creepy, is a huge infringement of my liberty. They could have contacted us or come and knocked on the door rather than opting for surveillance, which is completely underhand." The woman, who lived in the Parkstone area of Poole, said her daughter was having trouble sleeping because she feared "a man outside watching us".
The surveillance took place because the family put their house up for sale but lived in it until the end of January to ensure their youngest daughter would qualify for the school. They later moved to another area of the town and their daughter was accepted at the school.
The civil rights group Liberty called the spying "disproportionate" and "intrusive", while Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne called for council powers to be reduced. He said: "Using criminal powers to spy on parents is ridiculously over the top. Poole council officials should lie down in a darkened room until the urge to play James Bond passes. These powers are all too easily abused by the 653 public authorities entitled to use them. Their use should be reined back and restricted to important cases only."
Tim Martin, Poole council's head of legal and democratic services, said: "The use of RIPA procedures ensures that surveillance is properly authorised and provides protection for the subject of the investigation. The council is keen to ensure that the information given by parents who apply for school places is true. This protects the majority of honest parents against the small number of questionable applications.
"An investigation may actually satisfy the council that the application is valid, as happened in this case." The council said that on the six occasions it had used surveillance, three had related to suspected fraudulent applications for school admissions and two offers of school places had been withdrawn.
The Home Office said the RIPA legislation did not appear to have been used inappropriately.
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