Reading Borough council is starting a massive surveillance operation on residents. The Council has teamed up with an independent company Peeping Tom Ltd. which will check whether people receiving a 25% discount on their bills because they live alone (the Single Person Discount), are really living alone.

Jo Lovelock, Deputy Council Leader, said: "People often forget to tell the Council when their circumstances change, for example they may have met someone on Gaydar or may be carrying out an affair with a colleague and simply don't want the council to know. It's hard to tell these days when some people own multiple properties and others don't use their married names."

On behalf of the Council, Peeping Tom Ltd. will be twitching curtains, listening to neighbourhood gossip, checking receipts in your bins, following you to work and using data matching technology to check the council tax database and compare it with other records, including the Council's electoral register in a massive abuse of the Data Protection Act. The council is hoping that such a move will allow them to close polling stations, saving thousands of pounds, as people realise that electoral roll information is being used to snoop on them and refuse to register.