CCTV for restaurants, pubs and bars

How to cover licensed premises with CCTV

Two different risks live in licensed premises: what happens at the till, and what happens in the room. Cover both. Four cameras is the working minimum — the till and back bar, the front door, the cellar hatch or cellar steps, and the delivery or kitchen door. Eight adds the pass, the beer garden, the car park and a second bar.

The till camera should hold the screen, the drawer and the hands in one frame. Most bar losses are not a hand in the till; they are the pour that never gets rung through, the void, and the refund at the end of a shift. Frame the EPOS display so a figure is readable and the footage can be matched against the Z-read.

The kitchen is an environment problem. Grease aerosol, steam and daily degreaser destroy cheap housings, so use a sealed IP66 or IP67 camera with a wipeable face, and site it on the pass or the back door rather than directly above a fryer or combi where the heat plume sits. A camera on the pass earns its keep on allergen and order disputes alone.

Light is the other trap. Bars run at a few lux by design. ColorVu holds colour but wants some ambient light or its own white light on, which regulars notice. A Smart Hybrid Light camera lets you keep infrared as the default and trigger white light only on an event. In a candlelit dining room, monochrome infrared is the honest answer.

Read your premises licence before you size the drive. Where a licensing authority attaches a CCTV condition it typically specifies coverage of every entrance, exit and external drinking area, evidential-quality images, and a minimum retention: Tonbridge and Malling has imposed 14 days, while several authorities' model conditions specify 31. Most in-stock eight-camera kits record around 28 days as supplied, so a 31-day condition usually means specifying a larger drive at the point of order. Conditions also commonly require a member of staff on duty who can produce footage on request — so buy a recorder somebody can actually export from, and train two people, not one.

Sources: The ICO's video surveillance guidance · The ICO's CCTV advice for small organisations