What can I do if a neighbour's camera points at my garden?

This is now one of the most common neighbour disputes in the country, and it usually starts as a misunderstanding: someone fits a doorbell or a garden camera without ever looking at what is in the frame. The law gives you a real position, but the fastest resolution is almost always the conversation.

Step by step

1. Work out what the camera can actually see.Stand where it points. A camera aimed along a shared drive that catches the edge of your path is a different matter from one framed on your patio doors or a bedroom window. Be accurate before raising it.
2. Ask, plainly and early.Most people have never looked at their own footage from a neighbour's point of view. Asking them to angle it down, mask your property or turn off audio resolves the majority of cases in one conversation.
3. Know what you are entitled to ask for.Once their camera captures beyond their boundary they are a data controller: they must have a justification, provide a visible notice, minimise capture, keep footage no longer than needed, and respond to a request from you for footage of yourself.
4. Make a written request if the conversation fails.A short letter or email: what the camera captures, that it goes beyond their boundary, and asking them to reposition or mask it. Keep a copy. This becomes the evidence trail for everything after.
5. Consider a subject access request.You can ask for a copy of footage of yourself, normally answered within a month. It is a formal step and it tends to concentrate minds on how much is being kept and why.
6. Escalate to the ICO if it is genuinely disproportionate.The Information Commissioner's Office handles domestic CCTV complaints and publishes guidance for both sides. They will expect you to have raised it with the neighbour first.
7. Recognise when it stops being about data protection.A camera deliberately trained on your windows, tracking you, combined with other behaviour, can amount to harassment. That is a police matter, not an ICO one, and it should be reported as such.
8. Screen your own side.A trellis panel, a tall planted screen, a parasol or a garden sail solves the practical problem immediately while the formal process runs. It is entirely within your control and it is often the fastest relief.
9. Do not interfere with the camera.Covering, moving, damaging or dazzling someone else's camera can be criminal damage or worse, and it destroys your position in any complaint. Everything you do should be on your own land.
10. Keep a dated record.Photographs of the camera position, dates of conversations, copies of letters. If this ever goes further, the record is what carries it.

Tips

• Assume incompetence before malice. Very few people aim a camera at a neighbour deliberately; most have never checked the frame.
• If you are also thinking of fitting a camera, sort your own coverage out first. It makes the conversation far easier.
• Mediation services, often available through the council, resolve these disputes much more cheaply than any legal route.

Common mistakes

• Opening with a solicitor's letter — It hardens a position that is usually just thoughtlessness, and both the ICO and any court will expect a reasonable attempt to resolve it directly first.
• Blocking or covering the camera yourself — It is likely to be criminal damage or interference with someone else's property, and it converts you from complainant to defendant.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask