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NDR / Claims, court and footage / CCTV footage for claims and disputes

Evidence work · video that holds up when somebody argues with it

CCTV evidence for claims, Nottingham. Anyone can pull the clip off; making it survive a challenge is the job.

Send the hold request in writing today, before the loop reaches the half hour you care about — it costs nothing and it is the one step nobody can do for you. Whoever ends up with that clip, an insurer's assessor or an officer at Nottinghamshire Police, has to be satisfied it genuinely came off that recorder, and that argument is won at the box, not at a desk three weeks later. Data-protection law hands you rights over any footage you appear in, and exercising them is what actually gets a copy released. Nothing goes out of here unhashed or undocumented: there is a dated log of who has held each file and how it came to be made. Recovery itself is £400 + VAT, and it is the small part. What gives a clip any value is the paperwork wrapped round it. Where the system belongs to someone else, their permission comes first.

On most jobs, nothing to pay if no files come back Treated as an exhibit from the moment it lands Every hour, the loop writes over more of it

An engineer will talk it through, in confidence
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What actually gets a copy released.

Going by subject accessUK GDPR obliges an operator to release a copy of footage that identifies you. One calendar month is the usual deadline for the reply, extendable by up to two further months for complex or numerous requests; anyone else in shot is blurred beforehand, and a fee applies only in unusual circumstances.
Get the hold down in writingAn email sent on the day beats a solicitor's letter a fortnight later. Name the camera and the half hour, and put the request to keep it in writing.
If an officer asks for itAn officer asks, the operator agrees, and most footage reaching a Nottinghamshire Police enquiry gets there by exactly that informal route. A refusal turns the thing formal: a data-protection request first, and an application to the court after that.
What the bench can doA disk somebody formatted by mistake. A recorder that had already stopped by the night it mattered. An export cleared off an office PC. Those generally come back. £400 + VAT, and most jobs carry no charge where nothing does. What the loop has already covered comes back for nobody.

Time, and the law that sits round it.

Something else? Say what it does →
What it depends onWhat usually causes itWhat that means for you
Retention: the common mythNo law sets one. It comes out of arithmetic: disk size, camera count, frame rateAsk for it to be kept, today
A calendar month for the replyThe month runs from when your request reaches the operator, not from when it is readSend the request in writing
Everyone else gets blurredRecognisable faces get blurred before any copy is releasedSomething they owe, not a get-out
A doorbell camera aimed at a driveAim a household camera beyond your own land and the same duties attachHome cameras are inside this too
Custody, written downLogged at every stage — from the disk while it is still in the recorder through to the copy we post backEach file leaves carrying its SHA-256 value and a signed method statement
Getting it here: tracked, insured post to the intake lab, and the return leg is at our cost. Unsure what belongs in the box? Ring before it is taped up, and an engineer will run through what to include and what to keep at home. The rest of it is set out on the packing and postage guide.

The order we work in.

More jobs like this one →
01

Booked in the day it arrives, and the first look is on us Free

Your device picks up a case number the day it arrives, and an engineer then establishes what has genuinely gone wrong — at no cost, and ahead of everything else. Two things come back to you together: a plain account of what can be lifted and what cannot, and one fixed figure in writing. Agree to that figure, or turn it down and pay nothing.

The first look is freeOne fixed figure, in writingNo charge at this point
02

Stop it being overwritten first

Whoever operates the system gets the written hold, and where the system is not yours their permission goes with it. Somebody then has to establish honestly how far back that recorder truly reaches, working from disk size, camera count and frame rate together — not from a manual, and not from what the installer remembers.

A preservation request goes outHow far back it truly goes
03

Both formats, on every job

Two exports come off the image. One opens anywhere, and that is the MP4. The other is whatever format the manufacturer writes, .dav or one of its cousins, and the program needed to read it goes along too.

One playable copy, one native fileThe player supplied alongside
04

What goes out alongside the files

Every file that leaves carries three attachments: its SHA-256 value; a written account setting out how that file came to exist; and a dated list of every person who has handled it. Strip the three off and what remains is a clip someone forwarded on. Leave them on and a loss adjuster, or a judge, has something usable.

SHA-256 on both, plus the method noteStands up to a claim or a hearing
05

The file list comes before the bill

The file list reaches you before any invoice does. Say yes and it is billed; say no and it is not — and on most jobs, if nothing comes back there is nothing to pay. Whatever comes off goes home on media bought in for your case, carriage at our end. Nothing here is closed until you have opened those files on your own machine.

Nothing is charged until you agree the figureNew media, bought in for your jobWe pay to send it home

What turns up on recorder disks

  • One email, no cost, and the argument is over — state the date, the camera, and thirty minutes on either side of the moment, then ask in writing for the footage to be preserved. Nobody can afterwards say you left it too late.
  • A blurred face is not obstruction — masking its other customers before it replies is a duty the shop owes them under the same law that got you the copy. None of what you actually need vanishes with the blur.
  • Household cameras are covered too — a householder whose driveway and shed cameras took in a neighbour's shared access road, car park and garden (the doorbell filmed only the street) was held by a county court, in 2021, to carry the same data-protection obligations a business would.
  • Who is bound by what — relevant authorities, which in practice means forces and councils, are what the surveillance camera code reaches. Shopkeepers, landlords and yard operators answer to the ICO instead, under data-protection law, and every export off this bench is built to meet it. Reports for civil proceedings follow the expert's duty at CPR Part 35. Criminal work runs under the Criminal Procedure Rules 2025, next to a statutory Code which expects ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation for this sort of examination. We hold none. Nor any UKAS accreditation. Page one of the report states it, so nobody has to turn it up later. Worth knowing where that Code stops, too: its limit is criminal proceedings in England and Wales, which puts civil, family, employment and insurance instructions outside the regime altogether.

Why an insurer cares: on the ABI's November 2025 figures, detected fraud across 2024 claims came to £1.16 billion, of which motor accounted for £576 million over 51,700 cases. Good video pays an honest claim quicker, and stops a dishonest one dead, provided it turns up documented rather than forwarded.

One of these, from start to finish.

NG · NTG-2026-1708ON THE LOG ✓

The insurer wanted footage of both vans, and the clip was gone

A van picked up damage manoeuvring in a distribution yard on Manton Wood at Worksop, and the insurer asked to see it happen. By the time anybody did ask, the loop had gone round more than once and that day was nowhere on the disk. An export outlasted it, though. A copy had been taken off the box while the footage was still there, and cleared off an office PC a few months after that. The PC arrived here, the copy came back, both were hashed and the method set down, and the claim settled without anyone going near a judge.

The insurance claim brought to a closeExhibit-numbered export supplied

What helps, and what does damage.

Worth doing first

  • Send the hold request by email today
  • Write down date, time, camera, and who owns the system
  • If you are in the picture, put in a subject access request
  • Pass files on exactly as they are — no renaming, no trimming

What makes it harder

  • Waiting until the insurer asks
  • Filming the monitor on a phone and calling that evidence
  • Trimming the clip before handing it on
  • Believing whatever retention figure the menu displays

What gets asked before posting.

A shop has me on camera. Can I get a copy?

You can. If you are identifiable in the picture then the recording is personal data about you, so you may ask for it under a subject access request. Whoever runs the system gets one calendar month to reply. Everyone else in shot is blurred first, and in ordinary circumstances nothing is charged.

They have refused. What now?

Put it to them again, politely and in writing — a good number of operators hand it over at that stage. Where the refusal holds, two formal routes are left: complain to the ICO, or apply to the court.

How long before the recorder covers it?

Sooner than most owners will own up to. Statute fixes no period whatsoever. The only rule is that footage ought not to be held on after the reason for gathering it has passed, which puts the honest answer back onto the equipment itself: disk capacity, the number of cameras feeding it, frame rate, and whatever settings somebody chose on fitting day.

What do I actually end up with?

A file that opens anywhere and holds up when somebody challenges it. Four items travel together: an MP4; the recorder's own native file; a SHA-256 hash on both; and a signed account setting out how the two copies were made.

Start here if the same thing is happening to yours.

What the recorder still holds → Dashcam or bodycam clips → What the report contains → Jobs that end up in court →

Power the recorder down before the loop reaches your clip.

Cut the power to the DVR before anything else — while it runs it keeps writing, and the oldest footage goes first. Then post it in. The first look is free, CCTV and DVR work is £400 + VAT quoted in writing before anything starts, and what is on that disk goes no further than the bench.

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