Police force
Subject Access Request to Northamptonshire Police
What Northamptonshire 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 Northamptonshire 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
- Data Protection Officer Information Unit Darby House Darby Close Park Farm Industrial Estate Wellingborough NN8 6GS
- Their own SAR form
- Open Northamptonshire Police’s request form
- ICO registration
- Z4894886
- ID they ask for
- Northamptonshire Police asks for two forms of identification — one proof of identity and one proof of address. It lists a passport (the pages with photograph and personal details), a driving licence, a birth certificate or an adoption certificate as proof of identity, and says proof of address must be dated within the last three months and show your name and address. Documents must be scanned or copied in colour; the force says it does not accept black and white. Where the request covers body-worn video footage, CCTV, a custody photograph or anything containing an image, the force says proof of identity must be a passport or photo driving licence, and will otherwise accept a student ID, company ID or National ID card. If you apply by post it asks you not to send originals, as they will not be returned. The force's privacy notice states the requirement differently, asking for one photographic document and a utility bill evidencing ownership or tenancy at the address it holds — so a birth certificate is acceptable on the online route and is not on the notice's wording.
Source: Northamptonshire Police published information. Organisations change these details — tell us if this is out of date.
Specific to Northamptonshire Police
Northamptonshire Police handles subject access through its Information Unit. The force asks you to apply online, and also says you can make a request "by telephone, email, by post, or in person". A request is free, and you can write it yourself rather than paying anyone to prepare it. Two things on the force's own site disagree, and both are worth knowing before you send anything. The printable version of the privacy notice, which the live notice still links, self-dates to 30 October 2020: it gives a different postal address — Force Headquarters, Wootton Hall, Northampton NN4 0JQ — and a different mailbox, dataprotection@northants.pnn.police.uk. Both remain in use elsewhere on the force's estate and on its ICO register entry, so a request sent that way is not necessarily lost, but the current page designates Darby House and dataprotection@northants.police.uk. If you have already written to the older address, follow it up. The force also publishes a telephone route for exercising your rights: 03000 111 222 ext 341172. The extension is the part that matters — 03000 111 222 on its own is published elsewhere on the site under "Calling from abroad", and the same switchboard reaches Firearms Licensing on extension 341035. The force says it will respond "within one calendar month for subject access" on its privacy notice, and on the online route says it has "one month to respond to your request (or three months in complex cases)". If the reply is late or looks incomplete, check what a complete response should contain, and see when a request can be refused or limited. On identification, the online route accepts a passport, driving licence, birth certificate or adoption certificate as proof of identity, plus a proof of address dated within the last three months, scanned in colour. The privacy notice states it differently, asking for one photographic document and a utility bill. If your request covers body-worn video, CCTV or a custody photograph, the force requires photographic ID. Retention windows the force publishes, which decide whether a request is worth making at all: ANPR data is kept for one year, and most staff with permission can search only the first 90 days of it. For live facial recognition, biometric templates of people who do not match are deleted immediately, watchlists are deleted within 24 hours of a deployment ending, and the CCTV footage recorded during a deployment is kept for 31 days. A record of a stop and search can be collected for up to three months, or 12 months if you were arrested. The force's body-worn video and CCTV privacy notices publish no period at all and defer to national police retention guidance. A subject access request is not the route for several things the force is asked for. For a police certificate for a visa, emigration or residency abroad, and to ask for DNA or fingerprints to be deleted, the force sends you to ACRO. If an employer wants a criminal convictions check you need a DBS check, not a subject access request — and an employer cannot require you to make one instead (why that is unlawful). Disclosure for family court proceedings goes to the force's Court Order Team at Wootton Hall, not through the subject access route. Records held by a neighbouring force have to be requested from that force: Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Thames Valley and West Mercia all border Northamptonshire and each answers for its own records.
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 Northamptonshire 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.