Our position · standards and regulation, Nottingham
Two activities have been inside the Forensic Science Regulator's statutory Code since it took effect in October 2023, and version 2, in force from October 2025, keeps them there: device forensics, DIG 100, and the recovery of CCTV, DIG 300. For both, the standard named is ISO/IEC 17025. This laboratory does not hold it, and UKAS lists no schedule against us. What hardly any supplier goes on to explain is the reach of that Code. The Act underneath it names three limbs — crime detected or investigated in England and Wales, evidence intended for a criminal court there, and any further purpose a Secretary of State adds by regulation, of which there has been none. Everything else is outside: insurance work, employment matters, family cases, civil claims, which between them are most of what comes through this room. Nottingham Trent University was ranked top in the UK for forensic science in the Guardian University Guide 2026, so the readers most likely to go through this page line by line are on our doorstep. It is written for them. The first call is free and settles which side of the line you are on. Instructions begin at £800 + VAT, fixed in writing before any work starts.
An engineer will talk it through, in confidence
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| What to ask | What turns on it | What we say |
|---|---|---|
| Accredited for which activities, exactly? | A named scope is what accreditation attaches to, so it is the scope that matters and not the word itself | No. For any activity at all, UKAS holds no schedule against this laboratory |
| Is this a criminal case or a civil one? | The criminal side is what sits inside the statutory Code. Nothing else does | We say which yours is, and we say when to instruct somebody else |
| Who does the work, and whose signature is on the report? | Naming whoever carried out the examination is a requirement of the civil rules | A single named examiner, whose signature it also is |
| Do the limits go in the report? | Leave a limit out of the report and the other side will locate it for you | Into the report itself they go, and not into a covering email |
| What method was used, and could it be run again? | Nobody can check an examination that nobody wrote down | Method written out, hash values given, and notes taken while at the bench |
Forensic instructions begin at £800 + VAT, and where yours sits depends on scope — which is exactly what the first call settles: the events and dates at issue, the machines and accounts involved, and what precisely has to be proved. That call is free, and nothing chargeable starts before the figure is with you in writing.
A hardware blocker is in line before a thing is opened, and the sector-by-sector image is taken behind it, so no byte of the original shifts. A court tests that first, and it is the one claim on this page capable of being demonstrated rather than merely asserted.
Both values come off while the image is made, and off the closed file afterwards. An exhibit reference of its own goes on every item. Notes get written down at the bench while a job runs, instead of being pieced together a fortnight afterwards.
Steps go down in order, with every tool named and every version recorded, so that the whole thing can be run through a second time by somebody else. Where material yields no answer — or an answer that only holds with a qualification attached — that is recorded as well.
Give the other side a finding they cannot check for themselves and you have given them an argument. So the bundle carries all of it: exhibit numbers, hashes, dated handovers signed at both ends, which image every conclusion came off, and the notes typed at the bench as the job ran. Run the same steps again and the answer is the same.
The regulated field is smaller than anybody expects: the activity covering recovery of footage from CCTV and video systems is DIG 300, and the Regulator's count for 2024–25 put 33 organisations against it. Police forces account for twenty-nine, a government body for one. That leaves three commercial providers, with indicative compliance across the group at 59%. Specialist analysis — speed, distance, identification — is DIG 301: 43 organisations, compliance at 19%, and accreditation for the specialist analysis sub-activities held by nobody at all. So: three companies in England and Wales. Where a competitor claims accreditation, the question to ask is which schedule, and covering what.
An employment matter. Above the method, at the very top, sat the accreditation position — not tucked away below. It was read by the solicitor opposite, who put two questions about the imaging and then let the subject go. When the hearing came, the argument was not about when files had moved.
None at all. For any activity you care to name, UKAS holds no schedule against us, and ISO/IEC 17025 is not something this laboratory has. That sentence opens page one of everything issued here. The work is not barred to us because of it, and courts still read what we write — but a right to know sits with the party opposite, so it is volunteered rather than waited for.
Not on that ground alone. Departing from the Code does not, under the Forensic Science Regulator Act 2021, make anybody liable of itself in proceedings of either kind. What the Act permits instead is for the Code to go into evidence and for the court to attach what weight it chooses. Weight, then, is the battleground — and method is how weight is earned, which is the reason ours is published.
The 2021 Act anchors the whole regime at section 11, on two points in force today, with a third limb for any purpose a Secretary of State adds by regulation, and none has been. One is crime detected or investigated in England and Wales. The other is evidence intended for criminal proceedings. Employment tribunals fall outside both. Family cases do too, along with civil claims and insurance matters. Most instructions reaching this bench sit beyond the Code, and the first call establishes where yours belongs.
No. There is a line in the policing framework for video evidence. Footage watched as part of an investigation sits on one side of it. Image analysis sits on the other — speed, distance, height, one face or one vehicle set against another — and specialists holding ISO/IEC 17025 are who that side belongs to. Recovery, conversion, and handover under a continuity record: those are ours. On what a measurement would show, we express no opinion.
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.