Police force
Subject Access Request to Surrey Police
What Surrey 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 Surrey Police. The contact details below are published so you can make a request yourself free of charge.
Where to send your request
Verified 9 August 2026- Postal address
- Data Protection Officer Surrey Police PO Box 101 Guildford Surrey GU1 9PE
- Contact
- Information Management Team
- Their own SAR form
- Open Surrey Police’s request form
- ICO registration
- Z4895085
- ID they ask for
- Two documents, one proving identity and one proving your current address. Identity: passport (photograph and personal details pages), driving licence, birth certificate or adoption certificate. Address: a utility bill (not a mobile phone bill), bank or credit card statement, landline bill, council tax bill, driving licence if you have not already used it as proof of identity, 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 — dated within the last three months. Copies must be scanned or copied in colour; Surrey Police says it does not accept black and white. If you are asking for body worn video, CCTV, a custody photograph or anything containing an image, the force says your identity document must be a passport or photo driving licence, and accepts student, company or national ID only if you hold neither. If you apply by post, do not send originals: they will not be returned. Applying on behalf of someone else means two documents for each of you.
Source: Surrey Police published information. Organisations change these details — tell us if this is out of date.
The form gives each step two hours, and a collision report is a separate paid route
Surrey Police asks you to apply online. The form takes about five minutes and each step must be completed within two hours, so have your identity documents to hand before you start. The force publishes its response time in three places and they agree: one month, extendable. Its rights page says "We usually respond within 30 days. But it can take up to two months extra"; the application page says "We have one month to respond to your request (or three months in complex cases)"; the privacy notice says "Normally we will provide it within one month of receipt of your request unless an exemption applies." Applying is free. So is asking ACRO for the national police record — Surrey routes arrest, caution and conviction history there — and a criminal record check for a job goes to the DBS. A collision report is the exception: Surrey charges £130.70 for a copy of the police report, releases one only once the case is closed, and asks you not to apply until at least six months after the incident. Copies of your identity documents must be in colour. If you are asking for body worn video, CCTV or a custody photograph, your identity document must be a passport or photo driving licence.
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 Surrey 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.