Evidence work · dashcams and body-worn cameras
Card out, camera off. Those two moves are your entire job, and the rest follows from them. Half a minute of the right footage on a screen finishes most of these disputes — but only if the clip is still there, still opens, and still reaches somebody useful while it counts. Video that has been erased or damaged comes back here off SD cards, and out of memory soldered into the camera housing, in a form an insurer or an officer of the Metropolitan Police can work with. £400 + VAT. Looking costs nothing, and on most work nothing is charged where nothing comes back. Commercial vehicles make up a fair share of it: vans out of the freight yards at Park Royal on the A40, hauliers off the A13 at Rainham.
Talk it over with an engineer, in confidence
0203 0868633
| What is going on | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| Clips gone from the card | Whatever was written sits in the flash until something else replaces it | Take that card out now |
| The camera stayed on all the way home | Each pass of the loop costs you a little more | Shut the camera off |
| Playback comes up black | A write that got interrupted, or a card worn through | Set that card aside |
| Event files that refuse to open | Sealed in a format written for one model of camera alone | Unsealed here, then converted |
| A bodycam broken apart, or soaked | Housings tend to give way long before the memory chip does | Video is lifted off the chip |
| A loss adjuster or solicitor wants it done properly | Originals, an MP4, hash values and bench notes | Part of every job taken here |
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.
Not one thing of yours is opened, exported or altered along the way. A sector-for-sector copy is made of your card, or of the memory sitting in the camera housing, and every step afterwards runs against that copy, protected event files included. What you sent goes home as it arrived.
Carving lifts erased clips out of the image again. Where one is damaged, its header and its index need rebuilding first, or no ordinary player will look at it. Flash has one rule that never bends: the further that card gets driven, the less is left to find.
Driving-offence video reaches the Metropolitan Police by either of two doors: that force's own upload page, or the national dash cam safety portal. Go through one within days rather than weeks — where a notice of intended prosecution is needed, fourteen is the entire allowance. An insurer gets what every recorder job here turns out: originals, an MP4 anything will play, hash values, and a written method.
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.
The deadline nothing will move: fourteen days, and on a whole range of road-traffic offences that is the entire window. Inside it the registered keeper has to get a notice of intended prosecution, or the point is gone. Behind sits a six-month limit for beginning most road-traffic prosecutions. Individual forces cut off their own submissions earlier again, so look up what the one policing that road wants before uploading. Day twelve is worth sending. Day twenty seldom is.
The card itself was left untouched: an image was made of it first and every later step ran against that image. The clip asked for had gone overnight, but the picture data beneath it had not — so it came back off that copy, was hashed and exported, and reached the insurer within the week. Deletion and overwriting are two different things, and the card showed plainly which of them had happened.
As a rule yes, so long as it speaks to something genuinely in dispute and can be shown authentic. Authenticity turns on three things: a file left exactly as the camera laid it down, untouched metadata, and a written chain naming everyone who has held it since. What weight it carries is then the court's business.
Two routes. Send it through the national dash cam safety portal, and it goes to whichever force polices that stretch of road; or approach the force yourself. Both want the other registration and a witness statement carrying your signature. Timing is the hard part: certain offences need a notice of intended prosecution in the keeper's hands within fourteen days, and there is no extending that.
Usually not. Deleting a clip releases the space it occupied; the picture data itself stays put. On an ordinary flash card that data lasts until the loop comes back round to the same place, or enough further journeys are written across the top of it. Take the card out, shut the camera off, and there is generally something to work with.
They do. Anybody recognisable on a body-worn recording counts as personal data, and four duties arrive with that: a lawful basis; signage wherever signage can be displayed; storage under your own control; and a period you can justify for keeping what you record. Handle it in evidence as CCTV is handled — original kept, copies hashed, a note of who took what and when.
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.