I had watched a special on Discovery channel about this. Of course this is George Orwell's homeland. The most cameras per capita. Go figure.
From this site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television
CCTV was developed partly in response to IRA bombings in the United Kingdom. Experiments in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s (including outdoor CCTV in Bournemouth in 1985), led to several larger trial programs in the early 1990s. These were deemed successful in the government report "CCTV: Looking Out For You", issued by the Home Office in 1994, and paved the way for a massive increase in the number of CCTV systems installed. Today, systems cover most town and city centres, and many stations, car-parks and estates. The exact number of CCTV cameras in the UK is not known but a 2002 working paper by Michael McCahill and Clive Norris of UrbanEye [1], based on a small sample in Putney High Street, "guesstimated" the number of surveillance cameras in private premises in London as around 400,000 and the total number of cameras in the UK as around 4,000,000. The UK has one camera for every 14 people.
Traffic monitoring
Many cities and motorway networks have extensive traffic-monitoring systems, using closed-circuit television to detect congestion and notice accidents.
The London congestion charge is enforced by cameras positioned at the boundaries of and inside the congestion charge zone, which automatically read the registration plates of cars. If the driver does not pay the charge then a fine will be imposed. Similar systems are being developed as a means of locating cars reported stolen.
Speed cameras are ostensibly to deter speeding, although critics have claimed they are often installed to generate revenue for the installing agent, who collects the fines.