I want to find out what laws if any exist regarding video surveillance…

Hello Leon,

IN the last 2 years the neighbours have recieved permission from Brisbane City Council to build a rather large backyard shed that is approx 5m high probably 30 m long & 20m wide. We objected on the basis the property owner stored 2 large heavy duty (by that I mean the trucks are used to carry large earth moving equipment and are rated at 70 tonnes) trucks.

The land is rural residential & permits owners to store ONE truck of much smaller size. Council by laws permit the use of 1 truck for business use between the hours of 8am & 6pm mon - fri.

However these property owners store these 2 heavy duty trucks & operate all hours of the night , the latest being 2.20am recently. The trucks are noisy. When they brake the air brake systems waken us from a deep sleep. This happens any day of the week but not always.

My reason for video surveillance is to prove to council that these trucks do indeed operate outside permitted hours. We warned the council in our initial objections for th approval of the shed that this would get worse. So now the council puts the onus back on us to diarise when these non conforming events occurr. I don't think it is fair that we are now the victims and I want to provide unquestionable evidencve that these non conforming events do indeed occurr so they can then take action to prevent this from occurring.

Sorry a bit long winded but will hopefully explain why. Does this answer your question?

Further to this i am just wanting to know if I have the right legally as I may be infringing privacy laws, to provide video surveillance evidence of the trucks movements at various times of the night, to council as evidence.

Oh yes Leon a number of times. They have asked me to dairise these events when they happen. They come out have a chat to the neighbour outlining our complaints. He complies for a couple of weeks & then goes back to previous behaviour.

The biggest issue is that he operates these large vehicles in the middle of the night, interrupts our sleep in a zoning not designed for it & its really hard to verify he actually does this unless I can capture this on video.

I'm not sure if council can then use the video verification to get him to refrain from these nocturnal episodes or use it as evidence due to privacy issues. Thats what I am trying to establish.

Also when council comes to meet wiuth him, they obviously call him in advance & he just takes one vehicle offsite so they can never establish he has 2 vehicles operating.