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The dreaded phrase 'unexpected item in the bagging area' could soon be a thing of the past at thousands of self-service checkouts in high street supermarkets around the UK, according to a new report.

For a new hi-tech camera system is being designed to end the necessity of the robotic message that sends Britain's time-strapped shoppers into a fury as it brings their transaction to a shuddering halt.

Trade magazine The Grocer reported yesterday that the shopping frustration breakthrough could come from the company that installed the UK's first self-service checkout 12 years ago.

Please wait for assistance: Cameras to see when you have accidentally left another item in the bagging area are set to hit supermarkets across the country - but not for about a year

It says that checkout specialist NCR, which first installed a self-scan system in a Marks & Spencer store in 2002, is looking to develop technology that will use cameras to identify when a customer has inadvertently rested their wallet, phone or umbrella in the bagging area. This will allow the till to continue the checkout process without the need for a member of the store staff to intervene.

NCR retail division's general manager of self-checkout solutions, Dusty Lutz, told The Grocer that the system was about a year away from being rolled out.

He said: 'At the moment, the systems are generally quite one-dimensional and only work by recognising the weight of the products that are supposed to be in the bagging area.

'It would really speed up the process if we had a camera which could quickly spot whether the extra weight was a customer's purse rather than these false alarms.'

As well as traditional self-scan systems, which are designed for smaller shopping trips, NCR has developed bigger systems that allow shoppers to place a full weekly shop on a conveyor belt and use 360-degree scanners to process the full order at once.

The technology is currently being trialled by Tesco and Asda but Mr Lutz said it would be at least a further four or five years before such systems became commonplace in UK supermarkets.

A survey of UK shoppers found that 89 per cent of consumers said they use self-checkouts to some degree, while 39 per cent of them either 'strongly agree' or 'agree' that retailers offering the technology provide better customer service.