AS THE new coalition government announces plans to scrap ID cards and reform council 'spying' powers, it has emerged that the council's secret surveillance of residents trebled last year.

Redbridge Council used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to investigate people living in the borough ten times in 2009/10 over suspected licensing breaches, trading standards offences, and anti-social behaviour, up from just three uses in 2008/09 – according to an investigation by civil liberties group Big Brother Watch.

The council did not release any data about how many, if any, prosecutions resulted from these operations.

Yesterday (Thursday, May 27) home secretary Theresa May said the ID card scheme will be scrapped and all cards made invalid within the next 100 days.

Peter Fawcett, of Lorne Gardens in Wanstead, was the first young person in London to be enrolled into the ID card scheme when it was launched in February.

Mr Fawcett, 21, said: "I'm not amazingly pleased to have paid money for it and now the scheme is going to be scrapped.

“I'm not too impressed with that to be honest. £30 is not pocket money, after all.

"I would have liked to have been given more information at the time, for them to say there's a risk that you could pay all this money but it might be cancelled.

"I'd like to be reimbursed for it, but I guess the government are making all these cuts to the budget at the moment."

Civil liberties campaigner and No2ID member Barry Tighe, of Littlemoor Road in Ilford, said he was pleased about ID cards being scrapped but felt that more could be done.

Mr Tighe said: “Obviously they've said they're going to scrap ID cards because it's headline-grabbing, but what about everything else, like RIPA?

“Why can't they take all the money they spend on surveillance and spend it on putting another couple of police officers out there?

“They're using terror laws to spy on people who put their bins out on the wrong days.

“It'll be interesting to see if the government mean it about reforming the law now that they're in power. They might decide that now they're in they might like to keep a closer eye on people and what they're up to.”

A spokesman for Redbridge Council said: "The Council takes its responsibility to residents' safety and privacy very seriously and has used RIPA to ensure that shops are not selling knives and alcohol to people who are underage, to help tackle anti-social behaviour and to investigate breaches of trading standards and licensing conditions.

"RIPA powers were introduced to help tackle exactly these types of crimes that blight local residents’ lives.

"In each of these cases our goal has been to ensure the safety of our residents and improve safety in the Borough not to invade the privacy of members of the public."