Our standing · regulation and accreditation, London
No ISO/IEC 17025 here. UKAS lists no schedule for us, whatever the activity. No police contract, no Home Office approval, and no trade association behind us. That is the position, and it sits at the top of each report leaving this bench. The Regulator's statutory Code reached its second version on 2 October 2025, and two of the activities it regulates reach a bench of this sort: DIG 100, data captured and processed from digital storage, and DIG 300, footage got back off CCTV and surveillance video. ISO/IEC 17025 is the standard set for DIG 100, and for DIG 300 unless an alternative framework is accepted. So some criminal-justice work ought to go elsewhere, and below we name it. The statute behind the Code stretches no further than crime investigated in this jurisdiction and material readied for a criminal court. A civil claim, an employment matter, a family case, a claim on a policy — all outside it, and between them most of what we are asked to do. This laboratory's patch takes in the Royal Courts of Justice, two of the four Inns of Court and tens of thousands of legal jobs. It is written for readers who check. The first call costs nothing. Instructions start at £800 + VAT, in writing before anything begins.
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| Your question | What hangs on it | Our reply |
|---|---|---|
| Accredited for which named activities? | Accreditation attaches to a scope, never to a company as a whole, so the scope is the part to read | None. UKAS holds no schedule against this laboratory for any activity |
| Is the matter criminal, or is it civil? | Only the criminal side falls within the statutory Code. Nothing else does | We name which yours is, and say when to instruct elsewhere |
| Who did the work, and who signs the report? | PD35 3.2 asks the report to say who performed the examination, and under whose supervision | One named examiner, and the signature is theirs |
| Are the limits in the report? | Keep a limit out and the other side will put it in for you | They go in the report itself, never in a covering letter |
| What method ran, and could it be repeated? | An examination nobody wrote down cannot be checked | Method written out, hash values given, notes made at the bench |
Forensic instructions start at £800 + VAT, and where a particular job lands within that depends on scope — which is what the first conversation is for: the dates and events in dispute, the machines and accounts in play, and what has to be shown. That conversation is not charged for, and no work that costs you anything begins before the written figure reaches you.
A hardware blocker goes in line before anything at all is opened, and the sector-by-sector copy is made behind it, so not one byte of the original moves. This is the first thing a court probes, and it is the only claim on this page that can be shown rather than merely stated.
MD5 and SHA-256 come off during the write, then off the finished file once it has closed. Each item is given an exhibit reference of its own. Bench notes are put down as the work happens, rather than reconstructed from recollection a fortnight afterwards.
The steps are recorded in sequence. Tools are named, versions noted, and a second examiner can therefore run that sequence through from the start. Where material yields nothing, or yields an answer that only stands with a caveat on it, that goes down too.
Hand the other side a finding they have no way of testing and the argument is theirs. So the bundle carries the lot: every exhibit numbered, every hash, handovers dated and countersigned, the image behind each conclusion, and the notes written up at the bench while the work went on. Repeat the steps and the result does not move.
The regulated field is far smaller than anybody assumes: DIG 300 is the activity code for getting footage back off CCTV and surveillance video, and the Regulator's annual report for 2024–25 counted just 33 organisations against it. Twenty-nine are police forces and one a government department, which leaves three commercial providers; indicative compliance over the whole 33 stood at 59%. DIG 301 is the specialist analysis — how fast, how far, who — with 43 organisations against it, at 19%, and nobody at all accredited for the specialist analysis sub-activities. Three firms, then, in England and Wales. So when a supplier says it is accredited, ask which schedule, and what is named on it.
An employment matter. The accreditation position sat at the top of page one, above the method, rather than tucked away at the back where somebody would have to go looking. The solicitor acting against us read that first, asked two things about how the image had been made, and went no further. By the hearing, when the files had moved was not among the arguments.
For nothing whatever. Name an activity and UKAS still holds no schedule for this laboratory against it, and ISO/IEC 17025 is not something we have. No police contract either, no Home Office approval, no trade association. Page one of everything issued here opens with that. The work is not closed to us on account of it, and courts do read what we write. The party opposite ought to have it from us rather than dig it out, so we say it first.
Not on that footing alone. Section 4 of the Forensic Science Regulator Act 2021 says a departure from the Code does not, by itself, make anyone liable in either kind of proceedings. What it does permit is that the Code goes into evidence and the court decides what the departure is worth. Weight, then, is where this gets fought — and weight comes out of method, which is why ours is set down and published.
Section 11 of the 2021 Act ties the regime to two things only: the detection or investigation of crime within England and Wales, plus evidence readied for a criminal court in the same jurisdiction. An employment tribunal is neither. Nor is a family court, a civil claim, or a file sitting with an insurer. Most instructions arriving at this bench are outside the Code entirely, and the first call settles which side yours falls on.
Yes. Image analysis first — speed, distance, height, or a face or vehicle from one recording held against another. That is DIG 301, specialist work under ISO/IEC 17025, and on what a measurement would give we offer no view. Where a criminal court expects an accredited provider, the instruction goes elsewhere — on the first call. Live communications in transit, never. And nothing is examined without recorded authority from someone entitled to give it: examining a machine without authority engages the Computer Misuse Act 1990 at its section 1.
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.