Requesting CCTV footage
Footage is only useful if it still exists and if you ask for the right window. Most requests that fail do so for one of two reasons: too much time passed, or nobody could say when it happened. This is how to ask, what we need, and where the limits are.
On this page
On this page
CCTV footage is personal information about identifiable people, and how a club may use, store and disclose it is governed by privacy law, your own surveillance and privacy policies, and sometimes conditions on your licence. Nothing on this page is legal advice.
What we can do is operate the system, preserve footage when you ask, and provide it to you as the operator of the venue. Decisions about who should receive footage, and on what basis, are your club's — made by your GM or board, with proper advice where it matters. If in doubt, preserve first and decide second. Preserving is always safe; disclosing may not be.
Almost every footage request we handle is routine — a slip in the car park, a dispute at the bar, a missing bag, a damaged door. The ones that go wrong are the ones raised a fortnight later with no idea of the time.
If you only read one thing
- Ask for it the same day if you can. Footage doesn't keep forever. Time is the thing you can't get back.
- The time is everything. Date and time to the nearest fifteen minutes, and which area. Without that, there's nothing to search.
- Ask us to preserve it before you decide anything. Preserving is quick and commits you to nothing.
- Don't film the monitor with your phone. Ask for a proper export — a phone video of a screen is useless to an insurer or the police.
- Decide who may see it before you show anyone. That's a GM call, not a duty manager one.
01 — ImmediatelyThe first thing to do after an incident
Before anything else, and before you've decided whether footage will actually be needed:
Write down the time, while you remember it
Even roughly. "Between 7:15 and 7:45pm, near the bistro entrance." This single note is the difference between a five-minute job and an impossible one.
Note where, in your venue's own words
"Front bar, the end near the TAB." "Car park, disabled bay side." We know your camera layout — we just need the place.
Ask us to preserve it
Ring or email the same day: "Please preserve footage, [date], [time window], [area]". That's all it takes. It stops the footage being overwritten while your club works out what it wants to do.
Follow your own incident process
Incident report, witness details, first aid record, notifications — whatever your club requires. Footage supports that record; it doesn't replace it.
Then decide what's needed
With the footage safe, your GM can take advice and decide calmly whether it's reviewed, exported, or simply left preserved and unused.
The most common regret we hear is "we didn't think we'd need it". A preservation request costs almost nothing and buys you weeks of thinking time. If there's any chance an incident becomes a claim, a complaint or a police matter, preserve it that day and let the decision-making happen afterwards.
02 — The requestWhat we need from you
Email support@cyberry.com.au — or ring if it's urgent
- Date
- The actual date. "Saturday 18 July"
- Time window
- As tight as you can, but err on the wide side. "Between 7:00pm and 8:00pm"
- Area
- Where in the venue, in your own words. "Front bar near the TAB screens, and the corridor to the toilets"
- What we're looking for
- Enough to identify the moment. "A member slipped near the bar mat" · "A bag left on a table and taken"
- What you need
- Preserve only? A review? An exported copy? Tell us which — they're different jobs.
- Who authorised it
- The name of the manager requesting it. We'll want this for anything being exported or handed on.
- Any deadline
- Insurer's cut-off, a police request, a member's complaint timeframe.
- Is it a police matter?
- Say so up front — it changes how it's handled. See below.
If you genuinely don't know the time, tell us what you do know — "some time Friday evening", or "between closing Thursday and opening Friday". A wider search takes longer but is often still possible.
Why the time window matters so much
A venue's cameras are recording continuously across many views. Finding a specific moment means someone reviewing footage in real time — so a fifteen-minute window across two cameras is quick, and "some time last week" across the whole venue is days of work that may still find nothing. Every minute of narrowing you can do saves a great deal at our end, and makes success far more likely.
Two practical things that help enormously: a POS transaction time (a receipt gives you the minute exactly), and anything else time-stamped — a phone call log, a paging record, a booking time, a text message.
03 — Time limitsHow long footage lasts
Recording systems keep footage for a limited period and then overwrite the oldest to make room. How long yours keeps depends on your system, how many cameras it has and how it was configured — it isn't a fixed number, and it isn't the same at every venue.
Ask us what your retention period actually is, and write it down. Every GM should know that number without having to ask, because it's the deadline on every footage request you'll ever make.
- Retention can shrink without anyone noticing. Adding cameras, raising quality, or a drive filling up all reduce how far back the system holds. If cameras have been added since it was set up, your retention may not be what you were told two years ago.
- A full or failing drive can cut it dramatically. This is one reason we'd rather you told us about recording-system warnings than dismissed them.
- Preserved footage is different. Once exported or locked, it's out of the overwrite cycle — which is exactly why the preservation request matters more than the decision about what to do with it.
- Your policy may set a maximum too. Keeping footage indefinitely because it might be useful isn't necessarily the right answer under a privacy policy. Your club's surveillance policy should say what it keeps and for how long — and if it doesn't have one, that's worth raising.
- Gaming areas and other regulated spaces may have their own requirements about coverage and retention. Your compliance manager will know; we'll configure to whatever you need.
04 — AccessWho's allowed to see it
Live camera views and recorded footage are different things and deserve different treatment. Both are worth deciding deliberately rather than by habit.
- Name who may view live, and who may review recordings. Often not the same list. Duty managers may need live views for safety; reviewing recorded footage of an identifiable person is a more serious step.
- Individual accounts, not a shared one. So there's a record of who looked at what. See the staff access guide.
- Camera views on phones need thinking about. Convenient for a manager, and it also means venue footage on a personal device that could be lost or seen by family. If you want it, ask us to set it up properly, and tell us the moment that person leaves.
- Never show footage to a member, a patron or a third party on the strength of a duty manager's judgement. However reasonable the request sounds. That's a GM decision, and often one needing advice.
- Never film or photograph the monitor. Beyond being useless as evidence, a phone copy of footage is an uncontrolled copy of personal information sitting in someone's camera roll. Ask for a proper export instead.
- Never post footage on social media — not even to identify someone who's damaged property. It's the fastest route to a privacy complaint, and it can undermine a police matter.
- Keep a note of who received a copy, when and why. Simple record, worth its weight if anyone asks later.
05 — Third partiesPolice, insurers and lawyers
These requests are common, and the answer is always the same: they go to your GM, not to us and not to a duty manager.
- Police attending on the night. Be helpful and be careful — preserve the footage immediately, take the officer's name, station and any event or reference number, and refer the request for footage to your GM or the manager on call. Officers understand a venue following a process.
- Get the request in writing where you can, saying what's sought and why. Your club's policy on responding to police requests should set out who authorises release — and if there isn't one, that's worth writing before you need it.
- Insurers usually need footage plus your incident report, within their own timeframe. Ask them exactly what format they want before we export it.
- A lawyer's letter, or a request from a member's solicitor, is a matter for your GM and your own advice. Preserve, don't release, and don't respond on the spot.
- Someone asking for footage of themselves. People can have rights to information a business holds about them, and there are also situations where footage isn't released. Don't answer at the counter — take the details and refer it.
- Tell us what you need, and we'll produce it. We can export footage in a usable format with its timestamps intact and get it to you securely. What we won't do is hand footage to a third party without your club's instruction.
06 — ExpectationsWhat footage can and can't do
Worth understanding before you're relying on it in a difficult moment.
| Expectation | Reality |
|---|---|
| "Zoom in and enhance it" | Not a thing. The recording holds a fixed amount of detail; enlarging it just makes the same pixels bigger. What the camera captured is what exists. |
| "There'll be a clear view of their face" | Often not. Cameras are usually placed for coverage, not identification, and hats, hoods and angles do the rest. If facial detail at a specific point matters to you, that's a camera placement conversation to have in advance. |
| "It'll show what was said" | Most venue systems record video only. Assume there's no audio unless we've told you otherwise. |
| "Every part of the venue is covered" | No system covers everything. There are gaps by design — and there should be, in places like toilets and change rooms. |
| "It'll be clear at night, outside" | Depends on lighting. Car parks and outdoor areas are only as good as the light available. |
| "We can just watch it back quickly" | Reviewing footage takes roughly the time it took to happen. An hour of two cameras is an hour of someone's attention. |
| "The time on it will be exact" | Usually accurate, but worth verifying against a known reference for anything serious. Tell us if a timestamp looks wrong — that's a fault worth fixing. |
If there's a specific risk you want covered properly — a cash handling point, a car park entrance, a problem doorway — tell us. Adding or repositioning a camera before an incident is far more valuable than discovering afterwards that the angle was wrong.
07 — MaintenanceKeeping the system worth having
A CCTV system quietly degrades, and nobody notices until footage is needed. A few habits:
- Look at the camera views once a month. Five minutes clicking through. You're looking for black images, cameras that have drifted off their view, spiders, cobwebs, dirty domes, and anything now blocked by a new sign, plant or umbrella.
- Report a dead camera the day you notice it. A camera that's been out for a month is a month with no footage of that area — which you'll discover at the worst moment.
- Dirty domes cost you more than you'd think. Salt air, dust and insects on a lens turn usable footage into a blur. Cleaning is a legitimate maintenance job — ask us to include it.
- Tell us about recording-system warnings. Storage or drive warnings can mean your retention has quietly collapsed. Not one to dismiss.
- Tell us before renovations or new signage. Both routinely block camera views, and it's cheap to adjust at the time.
- Check your signage obligations. Venues generally need to notify people that surveillance is in operation, and requirements differ between states. Worth confirming yours are current and visible — your compliance manager will know what's required.
- Ask for a system review once a year. Coverage, retention, camera health, who has access, and whether it still matches how your venue is laid out. Layouts change; camera positions often don't.
08 — QuestionsQuick answers
How quickly can you get us footage?
Preservation, usually straight away — ring us and it's done. An export depends on how much footage and how tight your time window is. A fifteen-minute window on two cameras is quick; a full evening across the venue takes real time. The tighter your window, the faster you have it.
Can we look at it ourselves?
If you have access set up, often yes — and for routine things that's the quickest path. What we'd ask is that anything likely to become a claim or a police matter goes through a proper export rather than someone browsing and screenshotting, so the record stays clean.
What if we don't know when it happened?
Tell us what you do know and any time-stamped clue — a receipt, a booking, a phone call, when a shift started. We'll narrow it with you. It's slower, and it's often still possible.
Can footage be used for staff performance or discipline?
That's squarely a matter for your GM and your own employment advice — there are rules about surveillance of employees, and it's not a decision to make on the fly. We'd only ever act on your club's instruction.
A member says they were assaulted last weekend. What do we do first?
Preserve the footage today, before anything else, and follow your incident process. Then straight to your GM. Don't review it with the member, don't describe what's on it, and don't release anything until your club has decided how to proceed — with advice if it's serious.
How long should we keep an exported copy?
Long enough for the matter it relates to, and no longer — your club's privacy and surveillance policy should set that. Keeping exported footage indefinitely in a folder on someone's desktop is the wrong answer on every count. Ask us where it should be stored securely.
09 — Print thisThe incident card
Print it for the duty manager's folder, next to your incident report forms. The whole point is capturing the time before it's forgotten.
Incident — capture this before you forget
Cyberry Know-How · cyberry.com.au/know-how
Write down now
- Date
- Time — to the nearest 15 minutes
- Area, in our own words
- What happened, one line
- Any time-stamped clue — receipt, booking, call
- Who reported it, and witnesses
- Manager on duty
Then, same day
- Email or ring us: "please preserve footage"
- Complete the club's incident report
- Tell the GM
Never
- Don't film the monitor with a phone
- Don't show footage to a member or patron
- Don't hand footage to police or a lawyer yourself
- Don't post any of it on social media
- Don't describe what's on it to those involved
- Don't wait to see if it becomes a problem
Police attending?
- Preserve immediately
- Take name, station, event number
- Refer the footage request to the GM
Last reviewed 25 July 2026. Nothing on this page is legal advice. Surveillance and privacy obligations differ between New South Wales and Queensland and depend on your club's own policies and licence conditions. Decisions about reviewing, releasing and retaining footage belong to your GM or board, with proper advice where it matters — our role is to operate the system, preserve footage when asked, and provide it to you on your instruction. If your club doesn't have a written surveillance policy, that's worth raising before you next need one.
Need footage preserved?
Ring us today, not next week.
Date, time window and area is all it takes. Preserving commits you to nothing — and it's the one step you can't do later.