Police force
Subject Access Request to North Yorkshire Police
What North Yorkshire 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 North Yorkshire Police. The contact details below are published so you can make a request yourself free of charge.
Where to send your request
Verified 31 August 2026- Postal address
- Civil Disclosure Unit North Yorkshire Police Alverton Court Crosby Road Northallerton North Yorkshire DL6 1BF
- Their own SAR form
- Open North Yorkshire Police’s request form
- ICO registration
- Z4888236
- ID they ask for
- Two documents are needed, one proving identity and one proving current address, uploaded as photographs with the online form. North Yorkshire Police accepts a passport, driving licence, birth certificate or adoption certificate as proof of identity, and a utility bill (not a mobile phone bill), bank or credit card statement, landline bill, council tax bill or a letter from the DWP, HMRC, the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, UK Visas and Immigration, the Probation Service or a police force as proof of address, dated within the last three months and showing your name and address. Copies must be in colour: the force says it does not accept black and white. If the request covers body-worn video, CCTV, a custody photograph or anything else containing an image, the force says proof of identity must be a passport or photo driving licence. If you hold neither, it will accept a student ID, company ID or National ID card. The force's own subject access procedure asks for at least two official documents which between them show your name, date of birth and current address, and says photocopies will be accepted.
Source: North Yorkshire Police published information. Organisations change these details — tell us if this is out of date.
Specific to North Yorkshire Police
North Yorkshire Police covers North Yorkshire and the City of York. If the matter happened elsewhere in Yorkshire, apply to the force that dealt with it: West Yorkshire Police covers Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield, and South Yorkshire Police and Humberside Police cover their own areas. The force says you must apply to the force where it took place, which can mean applying to more than one. The force asks you to use its online form and that is the only route it gives a destination for. Its guidance says a request can also be made "by telephone, email, by post, or in person", but it publishes no postal address designated for subject access. The address above is the Civil Disclosure Unit, which the force's own subject access procedure says processes these applications, but the force publishes it under its Freedom of Information publication scheme rather than as a request address — so if you write, say clearly that you are making a subject access request. The email address above is published as the force's data protection contact and its privacy notice points the right of access at it; the same mailbox is also written without "pnn" as dataprotectionofficer@northyorkshire.police.uk. A third address, RRD@northyorkshire.police.uk, is designated for complaints about accuracy, erasure or restriction and is not a request route. Requests for records of arrests, cautions and convictions go to ACRO, not to the force. A criminal record check for an employer is a DBS check. A copy of a collision report is a separate paid route, not a subject access request: the force charges £155.90 for a report or £74.70 for third-party details only, both including a non-refundable £30 search fee. Two things worth knowing before you send identity documents. The force's website says that if you apply by post you should not send originals because they will not be returned, while its subject access procedure says identification documents will be returned by recorded delivery — the two disagree, so send copies. Copies must be in colour, and if you are asking for body-worn video, CCTV or a custody photograph your proof of identity must be a passport or photo driving licence. The force publishes an upper limit for how much work it will do: it treats 360 email messages as the point at which a request becomes excessive. For body-worn video it may supply screenshots roughly ten minutes apart instead of full footage where heavy pixelation of other people is needed, may supply only one camera's footage where several show the same event, and says a reasonable charge will be applied if redacting the footage would take more than 18 hours. Non-evidential body-worn video and CCTV are kept 31 days and ANPR records 12 months, so a late request may find nothing. A subject access request is free — one of the force's own procedure documents still refers to bringing an application to a station with a "prescribed fee", which is pre-2018 wording its website contradicts. To the north, Durham Constabulary covers County Durham and Darlington and Cleveland Police covers Hartlepool, Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton-on-Tees and Middlesbrough.
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 North Yorkshire 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.