Photography and the Law

After posting this blog, I received an odd comment telling me I was “lucky to not be arrested” from someone who will definitely know that’s not true. I didn’t care to get into a discussion with them, since their other comments showed they’d not actually read the blog properly, but I do want to address it here, both to clarify that I was not in the wrong, and to reassure others that taking pictures on public property is — in the main — completely fine.

Before heading out to the power stations, I read blogs and forum posts about cooling tower photography, and the consensus was that you might encounter a bored security guard who tries to make you feel like a criminal, but they don’t have any right to do anything except request you don’t take pictures and to move away. This makes sense: security guards are hired by private companies to protect private land; if you’re on public property, they have no jurisdiction.

Here’s the police guidance:

We encourage officers and the public to be vigilant against terrorism but recognise the importance not only of protecting the public from terrorism but also promoting the freedom of the public and the media to take and publish photographs.

Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel. [My use of emphasis.]

If Drax had called the police on me there and then, there is nothing that they could have done unless they had good reason to believe I was a terrorist:

Police officers continue to have the power to stop and search anyone who they reasonably suspect to be a terrorist under Section 43 of the Terrorism Act.

The purpose of the stop and search is to discover whether that person has in their possession anything which may constitute evidence that they are a terrorist.

Even in this instance, unless the police find material that they think constitutes evidence of involvement in terrorism, they have no grounds for arrest, and they cannot take away your camera, phone, or anything else. They certainly cannot destroy any of your footage or personal property. If police can’t do any of this, security staff certainly can’t.

Thinking all this through, I’m even more convinced that the security guard I encountered involved the police out of a personal grudge: if it is Drax procedure to call the police to investigate any person taking photographs, then why would the security guard have left his cosy staff room at all? Clearly, the security guards are meant to check people out and ask the police to look into them only if they have suspicions. I stand by my assessment of him: a bored jobsworth who enjoyed projecting his action-man fantasy onto a mundane encounter with a smallish women.

Sensitive Locations

There are, of course, some places that can be photographed from public land that are more sensitive:

If a person is seen taking photos outside a police station/mosque/chemical factory/facility/military base then this should be reported to the police. Call 101 while it is happening. Devon & Cornwall Police

Coal-fired power stations are not on this list, but nuclear power stations would count. The difference is fairly obvious. (And just for the record, I have no intention of taking pictures of a nuclear power station: there are other industrial ‘eyesores’ I find interesting, but hulking concrete cuboids aren’t currently amongst them.) Even in these cases, those photographing sensitive locations will be visited by police, but not arrested unless there’s some evidence (as per the above).

Public land is not to be confused with public access: stately homes, railway stations, museums, shopping centres, religious buildings and so on are all on private property, and it’s up to the owners to decide whether photography is permitted inside. This is why, should you arrange to go on a tour of any kind of power station, you won’t be able to take a phone, camera, etc, around with you; but the same power stations cannot put up signs outside forbidding photography.

The exception is nuclear sites, which are protected not only by private security, but by a special armed police force called the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) who “employ over 1,500 police officers and members of staff at nuclear sites throughout the UK”. In 2011, five men were arrested by the CNC outside Sellafield after taking photographs, and released two days later. The grounds for arrest were that they were “reasonably suspected” of being terrorists, but evidently there was no evidence to support these "reasonable suspicions”, as they were released without charge after 48 hours (which is still a very long period of time to be detained).

I mention this because it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge the many factors that lead to some people unfairly being more likely to be “suspected” than others: I’m white, female, university-educated, middle class, professionally trained to work with children (and therefore in possession of an enhanced DBS), and living in an affluent area of Sheffield. Even before they met me in person, police would be sure that I was no terrorist and, during our discussion, bored. I want to acknowledge here that I have a great number of privileges: the combination of these meant I could be so sure that no cop had any grounds to hassle me that I could even display my annoyance and still be told by the officer that no police visit was necessary and it should never have got that far. Not everyone can have that confidence in the law being applied fairly.