Can I request CCTV footage?

[snapdragongirl]

Got back to my car today, it was parked in a public road, and it has been badly scratched, not sure if accidental or deliberate. Is there any way of knowing if there is CCTV footage of the area? I looked but couldn't see any obvious cameras, but wasn't really sure what I was looking for! It would be good to know if the damage was deliberate or not...

How would I check if there's CCTV and who would I ask to view it? The police?

Any shops or anything around? Any private homes that might have CCTV and be willing to give you footage? They'd be the people to ask if so.

Any sort of public cctv is normally well signposted in my experience, so it's unlikely there's anything covert. I'd drop an email into the local police force and see if they've got anything - or even a local Facebook appeal for dash cam footage!

What sort of CCTV? There's council CCTV, like in a town centre, and cameras across some roads. There's private businesses who have cameras, like covering a supermarket car park, or a bank machine, or out the front of a pub or shop. And then there's private individuals - ring doorbells, people who have cameras overlooking their front gardens/driveways.

For councils and businesses you can make a subject access request if you contact them and explain you'd like footage of yourself and your car at X location on X dates. E.g. here are instructions for how to apply to Bristol Council https://www.bristol.gov.uk/residents/crime-and-emergencies/cctv-in-bristol. They have a map of where council CCTV covers.

For private individuals you see people posting on FB and Nextdoor groups sometimes saying hey my car or whatever was damaged on X date here does anyone have any footage that might be relevant.

You can try, but by our CCTV policy then anyone identifiable who hasn't given consent to be seen (except by police or similar) has to be pixilated out. That would kind of make it fairly useless for you.
If you have CCTV it's not meant to go beyond your grounds (public CCTV is different obviously) so you might find people unwilling to admit it too.

If you can find someone who has CCTV though they may be willing to share it with the police if you give them timings. That's what we would advise, and if the police decide it was malicious then they might decide to do something, but I don't guarantee that unless it's a known person who they're building up a profile.

Even if you find some cctv, don't expect much!
My car had all 4 tyres slashed and all windows smashed. I had cctv of the 3 thugs that did it, as well as the first 5 digits of their number plate, a screwdriver they had used to try and pry the doors open and clearly visible finger prints on the drivers door.
The police helpfully recorded this info and gave me an incident number for insurance. They declined to follow up.

Frustratingly it wasn't in front of a shop or pub or house etc where they might have it. I wondered if they were on streetlights (some of them seem to have a small dome shape on top, is this a camera?)

I doubt dashcam would help as it was the pavement side rather than road side. I think I've watched too many crime dramas where big brother is everywhere and you can't move for being on camera! I just imagined all public areas would be covered but perhaps not. Although it does sound like even if there is cctv footage it might not help...

If I'd had dashcam would it show or does dashcam only film at the front of the car not the side

The dome 9n the lamp is a time switch. You've been unlucky but probably not worth pursuing this avenue. What good will a bit of grainy footage be anyway? It's unlikely to lead you to the perpetrator.

Worth a go, but from what I understand it’s often very hard to obtain as a private citizen.

I know you're right, it probably is a fruitless exercise. I just felt so hurt by it, if it was deliberate. Not sure what I'd hope to achieve by establishing this though! Just reacting to the situation I think and wishing there was something I could do apart from just sort out getting it repaired...