A HEREFORD father wants to end the bureaucracy he says has left him with “no memories of his children to look back on”.

Colin James, from Belmont, is sick of being told he cannot photograph his children at various school and public events.

Now the father-of-two, who just this month was prevented from filming his teenage daughter in a stage performance, has launched an online petition and Facebook group in protest.

“People will frown at you the second you get out your video camera, they look at you like you are some sort of criminal,”

the 44-year-old said.

“So many of us parents are denied keeping memories forever like we used to be able to do.”

For Mr James, frustrations began when he paid £1 to complete a form that did not even involve official checks at his son’s athletics meeting – and boiled over when no-one was allowed to film the school Christmas production last year.

In fact, there is nothing legally to stop anyone taking pictures of anyone else in a public place.

Information commissioner Christopher Graham even issued a press release last December to say parents should be free to photograph their children in nativity plays and called for a “common sense approach”.

Recent government promises to relax anti-paedophile checks among those working with children may also bring further relief but in the meantime Mr James says it should never have become such a big issue in the first place.

“It’s not a reflection of the schools, it’s a reflection of the society we live in,” he said.

“The bottom line is we should be able to photograph our own children.”

In the meantime messages of support have already started coming in to a web petition set up to drive the issue forward.

Supporter David Beaumont says he is “100 per cent behind the campaign” while another, Nikki James, writes: “This is pathetic – paedophiles are in the minority, yet it’s the law-abiding decent majority who are suffering.”

Mr James added: “If paranoid parents or organisations don’t want to allow photography of children that is up to them.

“But stop using non-existent laws to make decent human beings feel like they have done something wrong when they haven’t.”

To help, visit ipetitions.com/ petition/photoban or join the We Should Be Able To Film and Photograph Our Kids! Facebook group.