Subject Access Request to West Yorkshire Police

West Yorkshire Police asks you to use its Right of Access form, and its data rights page says you can also make the request free of charge by emailing the address above, with evidence of your identity. Complaints about how the force has handled your data go somewhere else entirely, to a separate data rights complaints form - so the mailbox above is the request route, not the complaints route. If you would rather write, our free letter template covers the wording. The first screen of the force's own form is a gate you cannot skip: it asks you to confirm you are not using it to request criminal record information. West Yorkshire Police sends conviction history, police certificates for visas or emigration, and record deletion to ACRO instead, and points anyone whose employer wants a check at a basic Disclosure and Barring Service check. If a criminal record is what you actually want, this is the wrong door and the force has built that into the form. The force says it will tell you whether it holds information about you, and give you a copy, within one calendar month. Its privacy notice adds that a request handled under the general data protection regime can run to three months where the request is complex, and describes law enforcement requests as one month with no extension. Information about the force rather than about you is a Freedom of Information request, answered in 20 working days by a different team at FOI@westyorkshire.police.uk or the same PO Box 9 address. Sent to the wrong one, a request loses weeks before anyone tells you - what a subject access request actually covers is the quickest way to work out which you need. Material for family or civil proceedings is a third route again. The force says it cannot disclose to a member of the public involved in proceedings without a court order requiring it, wants at least 28 days' notice of a hearing date, and recovers its costs in private family and civil cases before any work starts. Orders go to its disclosure team at familylaw@westyorkshire.police.uk. West Yorkshire Police states that requiring someone to exercise their right of access as a form of employment vetting is unlawful, and a criminal offence for the employer. It also asks that requests are clear, concise and focused on the information you genuinely want, and says broad or inaccurate wording has to be clarified before work can start, which delays the answer. Reading your request back before you send it is the practical version of that advice. The force covers Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield. Anything that happened outside those five districts belongs to the force that dealt with it - the forces we have checked lists them. North Yorkshire Police and South Yorkshire Police are separate forces with their own ICO registrations and are easily confused with this one. The email above is the address the force publishes for its Data Protection Officer. Its entry in the ICO's public register gives the same mailbox on the older westyorkshire.pnn.police.uk domain, so if you found that version first, use the one above. The register also lists a telephone number for the registration, but the force does not publish it as a way of making a request, so it is not shown here.

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.

• 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

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.