SOUTH Yorkshire Police has been reprimanded by the Information Commissioner’s Office after it was found the force deleted more than 96,000 pieces of body-worn video evidence.

Body-worn video (BWV) footage is often recorded when officers engage with members of the public or when they are responding to an incident.

South Yorkshire Police say they use it for scrutiny and accountability purposes, and it is sometimes used as evidence in court.

At the end of each shift, officers’ BWV footage was uploaded and stored to a central hub which could be accessed and managed, along with all of the police’s digital evidence, via a secure system.

Following an upgrade in May 2023, the secure system began to struggle processing BWV data and a local drive workaround was put in place.

In August 2023 SYP identified that its BWV file storage was very low and further investigation found that 96,174 pieces of original footage had been deleted from its system.

Prior to the deletion, 95,033 pieces of BWV footage had been copied to a new system that SYP was implementing but, due to poor record keeping, the police remain unable to confirm the exact number of files deleted without copies made.

It has been confirmed that the deletion had taken place on July 26, 2023, and included the loss of data relating to 126 criminal cases but only three of the cases were impacted by the loss.

Of those three cases, the force states one may have progressed to the first court hearing if BWV had been available.

However, as there was no additional independent evidence to prove the offence, progression to prosecution stage was already uncertain.

Sally Anne Poole, head of investigations at the Information Commissioner's Office, said: “This incident highlights the importance of having detailed policies and procedures in place to mitigate against the loss of evidence.

“People rightly have high expectations that our police forces and services, which protect us, also protect the personal information they hold.

“There is a lot to be learned from this incident and I encourage police forces and services and other organisation using this type of technology to check and make improvements where they find potential flaws.”

The office gave seven recommendations to the force to improve upon, all of which have now been completed.

Deputy Chief Constable Sarah Poolman said: “We do not underestimate the damage any loss of data can do to our communities’ trust and confidence in us.

“Whilst the Information Commissioner’s Office has welcomed the steps taken by us in the immediate aftermath, such as trying to retrieve the footage and informing those affected, we are sorry that any victim of crime faced this challenge whilst going through the criminal justice system.

“We did, of course, work closely with the Crown Prosecution Service to minimise the impact on criminal proceedings and judicial outcomes and, whilst even one is too many, it is believed only three cases were potentially detrimentally affected by the loss of body worn video footage.

“We have already put processes in place to safeguard our data.

“Of the seven recommendations made by the ICO, all have been implemented.”