Witness Needed: White Frame Riding through Piccadilly About 5.45

Data Protection Act 1989 - you'll need to make reference to it to avoid having your request bounced. C&P from directgov:

          **How to request CCTV footage**

          You have the right to access images of yourself that may have been recorded by a CCTV camera system. This is because the Data Protection Act of 1998 means that public bodies like local councils need to make any personal data available to you if you request it. Personal data is information that relates to an individual and is held by the public body.

You will need to make a request in writing to the owner of the CCTV system. The details of the owner are usually written on a sign attached to the camera. You will need to give them enough information to identify you, for example a specific date and time, and a description of yourself and your clothing. They may charge you a fee of up to £10 for a copy of the footage.
If you contact a public body that holds CCTV footage of you, they must give you a copy of those images within 40 days. They may send you an edited version of the CCTV footage to protect the identities of other people shown in the footage.

                  **Edited footage**

          The CCTV recording may be edited to make sure that you can’t see any other personal data that doesn’t relate to you, like:

[] a vehicle registration number that is not yours
[]an unfair intrusion into the privacy of another person

Contact your local council for more information about how CCTV is used in your community, or see their CCTV code of practice for more about the use of CCTV cameras and the Data Protection Act.

Good info Steff.

A couple of other points are that some systems are not archived in any way and if something happened three days ago you might find it has already been wiped (recorded over) when you speak to the owner of the camera (- act quickly -).

The second point is that when dealing with the police it has not been uncommon - historically - for footage that shines a poor light on the situation for the police to go "missing".

Basically it's recommend that if you want to collect footage you should do so as soon as you can, absolutely nothing else out there will support your case better.