Police force
Subject Access Request to the Metropolitan Police
What the Metropolitan Police holds about you, where to send the request, and what to expect back.
GetMySAR is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of the Metropolitan Police. The contact details below are published so you can make a request yourself free of charge.
Where to send your request
Verified 4 August 2026- Postal address
- Data Rights PO Box 313 Sidcup DA15 0HH
- Their own SAR form
- Open the Metropolitan Police’s request form
- ICO registration
- Z4888193
- ID they ask for
- The Met asks for two documents: one proving who you are - passport, driving licence, birth certificate or adoption certificate - and one proving your current address, dated within the last three months, such as a utility bill other than a mobile phone bill, a bank or credit card statement, a landline bill, a council tax bill, or a letter from a job centre, the DWP, HMRC, the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, UK Visas and Immigration, the Probation Service or a police force. It says copies must be in colour, and that where the request covers body-worn video, CCTV, a custody photograph or anything else containing an image, the identity document must be a passport or photographic driving licence - or, if you hold neither, a student, company or national ID card. If you are applying on someone else's behalf you need two documents for each of you. This is the Met's own guidance rather than a legal requirement.
Source: the Metropolitan Police published information. Organisations change these details — tell us if this is out of date.
The backlog, what you can get free without a request, and which Met address to use
The Met asks you to make your request through its online form, and that is the route it processes. Its guidance also says you can apply by post, email, telephone or in person, but it publishes no telephone number for subject access and no separate postal address for requests. The address and email above are the ones the Met publishes for exercising your data protection rights, in its privacy notice last updated 6 June 2024. Two other Met data protection addresses exist and neither is for making a request. DataProtectionOfficer@met.police.uk is the Office of the Data Protection Officer. mpsdataoffice@met.police.uk is where the Met asks you to raise concerns about how it has handled your personal data. Sending a request to either will not get it dealt with any faster. The Met's own request page carries a notice saying the number of requests has risen sharply and there is a large backlog. It warns this may delay your request, particularly where material has to be gathered from several sources or a lot of it has to be reviewed. Two things are quicker, free, and do not need a subject access request at all. The Met says you can ask at a Met police station for a stop and search slip within 30 days of the encounter, and for a copy of your custody record within 12 months. If you are not sure whether you want the Met's own records or the national record held on the Police National Computer, the Met says you can apply to both. Both are free. Disclosure for family court proceedings is a different route. The Met requires a court order - the Private Law Police Disclosure Order, Annex 5 - and an initial fee paid to GOV.UK before it will consider the request. A subject access request will not produce it. You apply to the force in whose area the incident happened, which can mean applying to more than one force. London has two territorial forces: the City of London Police covers the Square Mile, is a separate data controller and has its own request route. The British Transport Police covers the railway network. The Met accepts requests made on someone else's behalf, but asks that person to complete and sign its third-party permissions form, and says the signature on it must match the one on their identity document. It also states that an employer cannot require you to make a request for your own data as a condition of your employment or contract. A request about someone who has died is not a subject access request. Data protection rights end at death.
Making a request to a police force
Made under Part 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018 (law enforcement processing), and UK GDPR Article 15 for non-policing purposes
A request to a police force is not a straightforward Article 15 request. Where a force is processing your data as a competent authority for law enforcement purposes, your right of access comes from section 45 of the Data Protection Act 2018 rather than the UK GDPR. The practical effect is similar — you are entitled to a copy of your personal data — but the restrictions available to the force are different and broader.
The same force may hold data about you under both regimes at once. Intelligence entries, custody records and incident logs sit under Part 3; an employment file, a firearms licence application or a complaint you made as a member of the public may sit under the UK GDPR. A single request can cover both, and the force should deal with each under the correct regime.
Police records sit in two places, and which one you want decides who you ask. Arrests, charges, cautions, convictions and firearms certificates are held nationally on the Police National Computer, and requests for that national record are handled centrally rather than by your local force. Everything a particular investigation generated stays with the force that dealt with it: custody records and custody photographs, body-worn video, 999 and 101 recordings, statements you or others gave, interview notes, and reports of incidents you reported. A national request will not return local material and a local request will not return the national record, so if you want both you make two requests. Scottish records sit on a separate national system again.
This is separate from a criminal record certificate, and which body issues one depends on where you are. In England and Wales it is the Disclosure and Barring Service, whose basic check guidance for applicants explains what you get; in Scotland it is Disclosure Scotland, whose Level 1 and Level 2 disclosures replaced basic, standard and enhanced disclosures on 1 April 2025 — mygov.scot sets out the levels; in Northern Ireland it is AccessNI, and nidirect lists the types of AccessNI check. ACRO issues police certificates for emigration and visa applications. None of these is a subject access request, and people routinely make one when they wanted a certificate instead, then lose months finding out.
What people commonly ask for
- Incident and crime reports where you are named
- Custody records and detention logs
- Intelligence entries and markers held against you
- Body-worn video and 999 or 101 call recordings
- Records of stop and search encounters
Watch out for
- Section 45(4) DPA 2018 lets a force restrict access where disclosure would obstruct an inquiry, prejudice the prevention or detection of crime, harm public security, or affect the rights and freedoms of other people. A restriction has to be necessary and proportionate for the specific information at issue — it is not a reason to refuse the request as a whole, and the ICO's guidance on restricting the right of access under Part 3 sets out the test a force is supposed to apply.
- Ongoing investigations are the most common ground for withholding. Records may become disclosable once proceedings conclude, and a force can tell you when it is worth asking again.
- A force can refuse to confirm or deny that it holds anything at all, where confirming would defeat the purpose of the restriction. That is a recognised answer rather than an administrative failure.
- Two exemptions sit alongside those restrictions: legal professional privilege — in Scotland, confidentiality of communications — which covers legal advice the force has taken, and safeguarding national security.
- If a force does withhold something, it must normally tell you within a month that it has done so and why, and tell you that you can complain to the force, complain to the ICO, or ask a court to enforce the right. Silence is not one of the options.
- Body-worn video and CCTV often contain other identifiable people, so expect redaction or blurring rather than full disclosure. And the right reaches your own personal data only — section 45 entitles you to personal data concerning you — so it is not a route to a recording of someone else, or to footage of an incident you had no part in.
- Records about someone who has died are not a subject access request — data protection rights end at death, and unlike health records there is no Access to Health Records Act equivalent for policing. ACRO points people to a Freedom of Information request to the force that dealt with the matter. That is a different law with different tests, and the duty of confidence survives death, so it is the right door rather than a guaranteed answer.
- It is a criminal offence under section 184 of the Data Protection Act 2018 for an employer, or for anyone providing goods, facilities or services to the public, to require you to obtain your own police record through a subject access request as a condition. Schedule 18 defines the records this covers by the bodies that hold them, and a record of a conviction or caution obtained from a chief constable is one of them. A job, a tenancy or an insurance policy made conditional on you producing your record this way is the offence, not a formality.
Your rights, whoever you are asking
Deadline. An organisation must respond without undue delay and within one month. It may extend by up to two further months where the request is complex or you have made a number of requests, but it must tell you within the first month that it is doing so, and why.
Cost. There is normally no fee. A reasonable fee may only be charged where a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, or where you ask for further copies.
Proving who you are. An organisation may ask you to verify your identity, but only where it has reasonable doubts about who you are, and it should ask for the minimum needed. Where it needs further information to deal with your request, the one-month clock pauses until you provide it.
How hard they have to look. An organisation has to carry out a reasonable and proportionate search — not an exhaustive one. What counts as reasonable depends on the volume of information, the difficulty of locating it, and the size and resources of the organisation. This is a common reason for a partial response, and it is worth being specific about what you want.
If they ignore you. Complain to the organisation first. Since 19 June 2026 every organisation has had a legal duty to give you a clear way to raise a data protection complaint, to acknowledge it within 30 days, to look into it properly and to tell you the outcome. If it does not, or the answer is incomplete, you can then complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Send it to the Metropolitan Police
You can do this yourself for free using the details above. If you would rather not handle the wording, the submission and the chasing, GetMySAR prepares, sends and follows up your request for a fixed £20 fee.
This page is general information about your right of access under UK data protection law. It is not legal advice. If your situation is complex or contested, consider speaking to a solicitor or contacting the Information Commissioner’s Office.