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ADR / Evidence, claims and footage / Footage for insurers and disputes

Evidence work · footage that survives being argued with

CCTV evidence for insurers and police. Lifting the clip is easy. Making it stand up is the work.

Get the hold request written and sent today, while the loop is still short of the half hour that matters to you — it is free, and it is the one step nobody else can take for you. The clip will end up in front of somebody, a claims assessor or an officer of the Metropolitan Police, who has to be satisfied that this really is what the recorder held; that argument is won at the unit, not at a desk three weeks later. Rights over footage you appear in come from data-protection law, and using them is what actually prises a copy loose. Nothing leaves this bench unhashed or undocumented: a dated log names everyone who has held each file, and records how the file was produced. Recovery is £400 + VAT and it is the smaller half of the job; the paperwork wrapped round a clip is what gives it any value. If the system belongs to somebody else, get their permission before anything else.

No fee at all on most jobs if the files do not return Handled as an exhibit from the moment it arrives Each hour the loop covers more of what is left

Talk it over with an engineer, in confidence
0203 0868633

How a copy actually gets released.

Through subject accessAn operator is obliged under UK GDPR to hand you a copy of footage in which you can be identified. The reply is due within one calendar month; other people in frame are blurred beforehand; and only in unusual cases is a fee payable.
The hold, put in writingAn email sent on the day carries more weight than a solicitors' letter a fortnight later. Identify the camera and the half hour, then ask in writing for the material to be kept.
When an officer asksAn officer asks, the operator hands it over, and most footage reaching a Metropolitan Police enquiry — or a City of London Police one — gets there by that informal route. Refuse, and it turns formal: a data-protection request, then an application to court.
What this bench can doA disk that somebody formatted by accident. A recorder already stopped before the night in question. An office PC from which the export was deleted. Those usually come back. £400 + VAT, and on most work nothing is charged where nothing is recovered. Whatever the loop has written over comes back for nobody.

Timing, and the law behind it.

Not listed? Tell us what it does →
What it turns onThe usual reason for itWhere that leaves you
Retention: the usual mythNo statute fixes one. It is arithmetic: disk size, camera count, frame rateAsk today that it be kept
One month, by the calendar, to replyThe month starts when the request reaches the operator, not when somebody reads itAsk in writing, not by telephone
Other people get blurredIdentifiable faces are blurred before a copy goes outA duty owed, not an excuse
A doorbell lens pointed at a drivePoint a household camera past your own boundary and the same duties applyDomestic cameras count as well
Custody, on paperLogged at every stage, from the disk still sitting in the recorder to the copy that is posted backEvery file goes out carrying a SHA-256 value and a method statement somebody has signed
How it reaches us:send it by tracked, insured post; Guildford takes it in, and the leg home is on us. Unsure what should travel with it? A call before the box is sealed will get you an engineer who can say what to include and what stays behind. The whole of it is spelled out on theguide to packing and posting.

The sequence we follow.

Other jobs on the log →
01

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

A case number goes on it the day the parcel lands, and an engineer settles what has truly failed before anything else happens — free of charge, and first in the order of work. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNothing owed at this stage
02

Halt the overwriting first

The written hold goes to whoever runs the system, and where it is not your system their permission goes with it. After that somebody has to establish honestly how far back the recorder truly reaches — a calculation from capacity, the number of cameras and the frame rate, never a manual and never whatever the installer recalls.

A preservation request is sentHow far back it really reaches
03

Both formats, every job

Two exports are made from the image. One of them plays anywhere: that is the MP4. The second keeps the manufacturer's own format, .dav or a relation of it, and whatever software reads that travels alongside.

A playable copy and a native fileWith the player alongside
04

What accompanies the files

Three things accompany each file out of here: the SHA-256 value for it, a written account of how it came into existence, and a dated list naming everybody who has handled it. Remove those and you are left with a clip somebody forwarded. Keep them attached and an adjuster, or a judge, has something usable.

SHA-256 on each, with the method noteHolds up in a claim or a hearing
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have read those files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the jobThe post home is ours

What the bench has learned

  • One email, no cost, and the argument stops — give the date, name the camera, mark half an hour either side of the moment, and put in writing that you want the footage kept. Nobody can afterwards say you were slow about it.
  • Blurring a face is not obstruction — the shop owes its other customers that masking under the very law that got you a copy in the first place. Nothing you actually need vanishes in the blur.
  • Household cameras are covered as well — in 2021 a county court held that a householder whose doorbell lens reached across the pavement and into the garden next door owed the same data-protection duties as a business.
  • Who answers to whom — statutory codes on camera surveillance are written for listed public authorities, meaning police forces and local councils in practice. A shopkeeper, a landlord or a yard's operator is left to the ICO and to data-protection law, and what leaves this bench is built to satisfy that. On civil instructions the report meets the expert's duty set out at CPR Part 35. Criminal instructions run under the 2025 Criminal Procedure Rules, beside a statutory Code expecting ISO/IEC 17025 for an examination like this one. None is held here. No UKAS schedule either. Page one of the report says as much, so nobody has to dig for it. It is also worth knowing where the Code stops: criminal proceedings, England and Wales, and no further — which leaves insurance, employment, family and civil instructions outside the regime altogether.

Why an insurer cares: the ABI's figures of November 2025 put detected fraud on 2024 claims at £1.16 billion, motor making up £576 million of it across 51,700 cases. Documented video settles an honest claim sooner, and puts a stop to a dishonest one, provided it arrives as an exhibit rather than a forward.

One job, followed all the way through.

LDN · ADR-2026-3108JOB LOGGED ✓

Both vans on the clip the insurer wanted, and it was gone

A van picked up damage while manoeuvring in a distribution yard on the Harold Hill estate beside the A12, and the insurer wanted the moment on screen. By the time that request arrived the loop had turned more than once and the day in question was gone from the disk. An export had outlived it. Somebody had copied the footage from the unit while it was still there, then cleared that copy off an office PC months later. The PC reached this bench, the copy was recovered, both were hashed, the method was set down, and the claim settled with no judge involved.

The insurer's claimsigned off and closedExhibit-markedcopy handed over

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Send the hold by email today
  • Write down date, time, camera and system owner
  • Where you appear in shot, make a subject access request
  • Hand files on untouched — nothing renamed, nothing trimmed

What sets us back

  • Waiting on the insurer to ask
  • Filming a monitor on a phone and calling it evidence
  • Trimming a clip before passing it on
  • Trusting whatever retention figure the menu shows

The questions that come up first.

A shop filmed me. Can I have a copy?

You can. Where you appear identifiably in the picture, the recording is personal data of yours, and the way to obtain it is a subject access request. The operator then has a calendar month in which to answer. Everyone else in frame gets blurred beforehand, and ordinarily nothing is charged for the copy.

They said no. What then?

Ask again, courteously and in writing — plenty of operators release it at that point. If the refusal stands, two formal routes are left: a complaint to the regulator, or an application to court.

How long until the recorder overwrites it?

Sooner than most owners will admit. Statute fixes no period at all. The one rule says footage ought not to be retained after the purpose behind collecting it has ended, and that pushes the honest answer back onto the equipment: disk capacity, how many cameras feed it, the frame rate, and whatever was configured on fitting day.

What do I get at the end?

A file that plays anywhere and holds together under challenge. Four items travel as one set: an MP4; the file written by the recorder itself; a SHA-256 value for each of the two; and a signed statement of how they were made.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

What is still on the recorder → A dashcam or a bodycam → What goes into the report → Work that reaches court →

Off the mains first, because that is what protects the evidence.

Whatever holds the evidence, take it off power before anything else — a recorder that is still running overwrites its own oldest material, hour by hour. Send it to us after that. Looking costs nothing; recorder work is £400 + VAT and forensic instructions start at £800 + VAT, both settled in writing beforehand. What sits on that disk stays here.

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Price my job Sending it to Guildford