Evidence work · dash and body-worn cameras
Card out, camera off. That is the whole of your job, and it decides everything that comes after. Most of these disputes finish the moment half a minute of the correct footage is put on a screen — for which the clip must still exist, must open, and must get somewhere useful while it counts. Erased and damaged video comes back off SD cards, and off memory soldered inside the camera body, in a shape an insurer or an officer at Nottinghamshire Police can use. £400 + VAT. The first look is free, and most jobs carry no charge where nothing is recovered. Commercial vehicles account for a fair slice of it: vans out of the parcel depot at Hinckley Park on M69 junction 1, hauliers off the A1 at Newark.
An engineer will talk it through, in confidence
0115 8220606
| What is happening | What usually causes it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Clips wiped from the card | What was written stays in the flash until something replaces it | Get the card out now |
| The camera ran the whole way home | Every turn of the loop takes a little more | Shut the camera down |
| It plays back black | A write that was interrupted, or a card that has worn out | Put that card aside |
| Event files that will not open | Wrapped in a format only that model was built to read | Unwrapped here and converted |
| A bodycam broken open or soaked | The memory chip normally outlives the housing round it | Video comes off the chip itself |
| A loss adjuster or a solicitor wants it properly | The originals, an MP4, hashes and bench notes | Included in every job here |
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.
Nothing of yours is opened, exported or altered at any point. Your card, or the memory inside the camera body, is copied sector for sector, and all the work that follows runs on that copy, protected event files and all. What you sent comes back in the condition it arrived.
Carving pulls erased clips back out of the image. A damaged one first needs its header and its index rebuilt, or no ordinary player will touch it. Flash has one rule and it does not bend: the further that card is driven, the less remains to find.
Driving-offence video reaches Nottinghamshire Police through the force's own upload page, or through the national dash cam safety portal where the force takes part in it. Use one within days rather than weeks, since fourteen is the whole allowance wherever a notice of intended prosecution is needed. Insurers get what every CCTV job here produces — the originals, an MP4 that opens anywhere, hash values, and the method in writing.
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.
The deadline that will not move: fourteen days. That is the entire window on a range of road-traffic offences, and what has to be served within it is a notice of intended prosecution, sent to whoever holds the registration. Behind that stands a six-month limit on starting most road-traffic prosecutions. Individual forces set their own cut-offs earlier again, so check what Nottinghamshire Police want before uploading. Day twelve is worth submitting. Day twenty seldom is.
Nothing at all was done to the card: an image came off it first, and the rest of the work ran on that image. Overnight the clip that had been asked for was gone, though the picture data beneath it was not — so it was rebuilt off the copy, hashed, exported, and in the insurer's hands within the week. Deletion and overwriting are different things, and the card itself showed which had happened.
Generally yes, provided it goes to something actually in dispute and its authenticity can be shown. That last part rests on three things: the file as the camera laid it down, metadata nobody has been near, and a written chain of everybody who has held it since. Weight is then a matter for the court.
Two ways. Go to Nottinghamshire Police direct, through the force's own upload page, or use the national dash cam safety portal where the force takes part in it. Both want the other registration, plus a witness statement you have signed. Speed counts: on certain offences a notice of intended prosecution must go to the vehicle's keeper inside fourteen days as a rule; the exceptions are where an accident occurred or where the driver could not be identified in time.
Rarely gone, no. Deletion frees the space; the picture data does not budge. It survives on an ordinary flash card until the loop comes back round to that spot, or until a handful of further journeys go down over the top. Pull the card, switch the camera off, and it is usually still recoverable.
It does. An identifiable person recorded on a body-worn camera is personal data, and that brings four duties with it: a lawful basis, signage where signage can go, storage under your control, and a defensible period for keeping what you record. As evidence, handle it the way you would CCTV: hold the original, hash the copies, note who took what and when.
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.