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RDR / Evidence and expert work / CCTV for claims and inquiries

Evidence work · video that holds up when it is questioned

CCTV evidence for claims and courts. Recovering the clip is the quick part; making it stand up is the job.

Put the preservation request in writing today, before the loop takes the half hour you actually care about. Whether it reaches an insurer's assessor or an officer, whoever receives the clip has to believe it genuinely came off that recorder, and the question is settled at the box rather than at a desk three weeks afterwards. Data-protection law gives you rights over footage you appear in, and used properly they are how a copy is obtained. Every file leaving this bench is hashed, documented and logged — how it was made, who has held it, and on what date. £400 + VAT covers the recovery, which is the small part; what makes a clip worth anything is the paperwork wrapped around it. Where the system belongs to somebody else, their permission comes first.

No files back, no fee — on most jobs Logged as an exhibit from the start The loop is recording over it now

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How you get a copy released.

Your right to a copyWhere the footage identifies you, UK GDPR obliges the operator to release a copy. One calendar month from receipt is allowed for the answer; where the request is complex, or one of several from the same person, the operator may take up to two months more, and must say so within the first month. Anyone else appearing is blurred beforehand, and a fee is charged only in unusual circumstances.
Put the hold in writingAn email on the day is worth more than a solicitor's letter a fortnight on. Say which camera and which half hour, then ask — in writing — that the footage be held.
When the police askAn officer asks, the operator says yes, and that informal route is how most footage reaches a Thames Valley Police enquiry. Refusal turns it formal — a data-protection request first, then an application to the court.
Where we fit inA disk formatted by accident. A recorder that stopped on the night in question. An export somebody removed from an office PC. Those normally come back, at £400 + VAT, and on most jobs there is no fee if nothing does. Footage the loop has covered comes back for nobody.

The clock, and the law around it.

Not here? Tell us what it is doing →
What the answer rests onWhat is likely wrongWhat happens next
The retention-period mythNothing in general law sets one. It falls out of the arithmetic: capacity, how many cameras, what frame rateGet a written hold in today
One calendar month to answerThe month starts when your request reaches the operator, not when they open it. A complex request, or one of several from you, can be extended by up to two months more, and they must tell you so within the first monthPut the request in writing
Other people get maskedRecognisable faces are blurred before any copy goes outA duty they owe, not an excuse
A doorbell camera pointed at a drivePoint a household camera past your own land and the same duties followHouseholds are not exempt either
A chain-of-custody recordEvery stage logged, from the disk still inside the recorder to the copy posted backEvery file goes out with a SHA-256 against it and a signed method statement
Getting it to the lab: the lab takes parcels by tracked, insured post, and the return leg is at our expense. Unsure how to pack it? Ring before the box is sealed and an engineer will tell you what to send and what to leave out. The rest of the detail sits on the packing and postage page.

What we do, in order.

How other jobs ended →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on your device the day it reaches us, and an engineer then finds the real fault — free, and before anything else happens. You are told plainly what will come back and what will not, with one fixed figure in writing beside it. Nothing chargeable starts until you have read that and said yes.

The look costs you nothingA fixed price, in writingStill nothing to pay
02

Freeze it before anything else

Whoever operates the system receives the written hold, with their permission attached where the system is not yours. After that, somebody establishes honestly how far back the recorder genuinely goes — worked out from capacity, camera count and frame rate together, never from a manual or an installer's recollection.

A written hold goes firstThe real window worked out
03

Two formats, every time

The image yields two exports. One is an MP4 that opens anywhere. The other is whatever the manufacturer writes, .dav or similar, and it travels with the program needed to read it.

A playable copy and the native fileThe player supplied with it
04

What travels with the files

Three things travel with every file: its SHA-256 value, a written account of how the file was made, and a dated list naming each person who has handled it. Take those away and you have a clip somebody forwarded. Keep them and a loss adjuster, or a court, has something it can work with.

SHA-256 values and the methodStands up in a claim or at a hearing
05

The list first, then the bill, then the files

You see the file list first, then decide. Nothing is invoiced until you have said yes, and on most jobs there is no fee at all if the data does not come back. What we pull off goes onto media bought in for your job, and the postage home is ours. The case stays open on the bench until you tell us the files open on your own machine.

Nothing billed until you say yesNew media, bought for the jobPostage home is on us

What we keep finding on recorders

  • One email, no cost, argument over — date, camera, and thirty minutes on each side of the moment, with a written request that the footage be held. No one can then say you left it too late.
  • A blurred face is not obstruction — where a shop masks its other customers before replying, that is a duty to those customers under the very law you have relied on. Nothing you actually need goes missing in the process.
  • A domestic camera is not outside the rules — a county court decided in 2021 that a householder whose cameras reached beyond his own boundary carried the same data-protection obligations as any business would. His doorbell's video of the pavement was found proportionate; what the court held unlawful was the doorbell's audio, which reached across nearly the whole of a neighbour's property, and the separate cameras covering the shared driveway and the communal parking area.
  • Which rules bind whom — the surveillance camera code reaches relevant authorities, meaning in practice forces and councils. A shopkeeper, a landlord or a yard operator answers instead to the ICO under data-protection law, and everything exported here is built to satisfy that. Reports for civil proceedings are written to the duty CPR Part 35 places on an expert. Criminal matters run under the Criminal Procedure Rules 2025, alongside a statutory Code that expects ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation for work of that kind. This laboratory does not hold it. Page one of every report says so, rather than leaving the other side to discover it.

Why an insurer cares: detected fraud across 2024 claims reached £1.16 billion on the ABI's November 2025 figures, with motor at £576 million of that over 51,700 cases. Sound video pays an honest claim faster and halts a dishonest one — but only where it arrives documented rather than forwarded.

How one of these actually went.

RG · RDG-2026-1708ON FILE ✓

Two vans, one deleted clip, and an insurer wanting proof

A van took damage while manoeuvring in a distribution yard at Theale, and the insurer wanted to see the moment. By the time anybody asked, the recorder had been round its loop more than once and that day had gone. An export outlived it: someone had saved a copy while the footage was still on the box, then cleared it off an office machine months later. That machine came to the bench, the copy was pulled back and hashed, the method written up, and the claim settled without going near a judge.

Their claim concludedCourt-gradeclip

What helps, and what makes it worse.

First things to do

  • Email the hold request today
  • Note the date, the time, the camera and who owns it
  • In the picture yourself? Make a subject access request
  • Hand files on as they are — no renaming, no trimming

What makes it worse

  • Waiting for the insurer to ask for it
  • Holding a phone up to the monitor and calling it evidence
  • Trimming the clip before you hand it over
  • Believing whatever retention figure the box displays

What people ask before they send it.

A shop filmed me. Can I get hold of the recording?

Yes. Once you can be identified in it, that footage counts as your own personal data and can be obtained through a subject access request. Whoever operates the system has one calendar month from receipt to answer, which they may extend by up to two months more where the request is complex or one of several from you, provided they tell you within the first month. Other people in the frame are blurred beforehand, and there is not usually a charge.

What if the operator says no?

Ask again, politely and in writing — plenty of operators simply hand it over at that point. If the answer stays no, two formal routes remain: a complaint to the ICO, and after that an application to the court.

How soon will the recorder write over it?

Sooner than most owners will admit. No general statute lays down a period. The single rule is that footage should not be kept once the reason for gathering it has gone, so the real answer comes from the kit: how big the disk is, how many cameras write to it, what frame rate they run, how it was configured.

What do I actually get at the end?

Something that opens anywhere and withstands a challenge. Four items go out together: an MP4, the file in the recorder's own format, a SHA-256 value against each, and a signed account of how both copies were produced.

If this sounds like yours, start here.

Video the recorder kept → Clips off a dashcam or bodycam → What goes in the report → Casework for court and claims →

Stop the loop before it reaches your clip.

The recorder is still writing, and each time it comes round it takes more of what you need. Pull its power now, then get it to us. The first look costs nothing, a fixed figure follows in writing, and nothing you tell us goes anywhere else.

0800 6890668

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