Insurance claims · evidence work from Plymouth
A loss adjuster is not testing your honesty. The question being asked is whether the file in front of them is genuinely the thing it claims to be, and that is settled by the recorder's own export, by hash values taken on it, and by a written account of how it came off the disk. Claims work is civil, so the Forensic Science Regulator's statutory Code, which reaches criminal prosecutions in England and Wales, does not govern it. We also record whatever would not read.
A quiet word first?
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| The claim | What reaches the bench | What it can show |
|---|---|---|
| Theft, or a forced entry | The recorder itself, or the disk out of one that has died | The period on either side of it, exported in the form the box wrote it |
| A machine caught by fire or water | The disk out of a scorched or soaked office tower | Schedules, invoices and photographs still held on it |
| A vehicle or a fleet claim | The dashcam's own card, not a clip passed on | The camera's whole data file, including the GPS, speed and sensor channels a forwarded MP4 throws away, together with a note of what the shared copy is missing |
| A business proving what it lost | The disk those records sat on | A hashed list of all that still reads, and a plain account of what the disk can no longer tell anybody |
| Liability being argued over | A recorder each side believes supports its own version | One set of exports, issued the same to both, with a method plain enough for either to run again |
Ring us and say as much or as little as you like; the call itself is not charged for. What it has to settle is the shape of the matter — what took place, which machines and accounts it reaches, and the question the evidence must answer. That is the scope. One written figure follows from it, and you have that before anything is opened.
Left powered, a recorder keeps writing, and its oldest material goes to make room for the new. Claims move a good deal slower than that loop does. Nobody can read the time remaining off a manual either, since it turns on disk size, channel count, resolution and how the box was set up. Cut the power first, then ring.
Reading a machine without authority is an offence — the Computer Misuse Act 1990, section 1 — so every job carries a note of who gave the go-ahead and on what footing. A landlord, an employer and the owner of a van are not in the same position as one another.
Two files go back to you. One is the native export, together with whatever player opens it; the other will run on any machine. The conversion between them is written down rather than buried inside a viewer. MD5 and SHA-256 go on both, and the gap between the box's clock and a reference time is stated in the report.
Anything the other side cannot check is worth arguing about. So the bundle is built to be checked: the exhibit references, the images each finding was read from, every handover with a date on it, the hashes, and the notes written while the work was going on. Their own examiner can repeat the work and land in the same place.
Worth knowing before you instruct anyone: version 2 of the Regulator's statutory Code applies from 2 October 2025. It names ISO/IEC 17025 as the standard for taking data off digital storage, and for CCTV recovery, wherever that work is done for a criminal prosecution in England and Wales. None of that describes a claim on a policy. We hold no accreditation of any sort, and that sentence opens every report we write.
A haulier and a food producer could not agree on the day a pallet was damaged, and the yard gate recorder held the only account of it. Nobody had ever corrected its clock for British Summer Time. We measured the offset, took a native export, and gave both figures in the report. The claim settled after exchange.
No. ISO/IEC 17025 is the standard the Regulator's Code sets for this work where it is done for a criminal prosecution in England and Wales. A claim is a civil matter, so that requirement never reaches it. We hold no accreditation, and page one of every report says as much regardless. Should a claim later turn into a criminal case, we write and tell you the ground has shifted.
Because it has been round a monitor, then a phone lens, then a fresh encode. Neither the timing nor the data the recorder wrote survives that trip. What an insurer wants is the material the box itself produced, with a hash on it.
We can list what still reads, and report what the disk itself records about the remainder. Where something has been written over, that is what the report says. Guessing is not on offer.
Somebody who is entitled to give it. The Computer Misuse Act 1990, at section 1, makes access without authority an offence, so the basis for the job goes on file every time. A landlord, an employer and the owner of a van do not all stand in the same place, and neither does a driver.
An insurer’s timetable rarely shifts, so the sooner the evidence is imaged and set down, the more of it survives the deadline. Start it here. The first look is free, and what you tell us goes no further.