Frequently asked questions

A self-assessment tool from the CCTV User Group. It tests a police force's demand for a higher level of Airwave vetting for your CCTV operators against the CCTV User Group's own Airwave Vetting Protocol, and produces a tailored clarification letter, a position summary and an evidence checklist so you can respond to the demand with evidence rather than guesswork.

Local authorities running their own public space CCTV control rooms, and the private companies that run a council control room under contract. This first release does not cover alarm receiving centres, monitoring centres, engineers or suppliers; the CCTV User Group is planning versions for those and would still like to hear from you in the meantime.

No. The toolkit sets out the questions the Airwave Vetting Protocol says to ask and the evidence to gather. It does not decide the vetting level that applies to your service, and it is not a substitute for your own legal advice or your own risk assessment.

The CCTV User Group is the voice of UK public space surveillance, a membership organisation for CCTV managers, operators and community safety professionals across local authorities, police and the private sector, established in 1997. The Protocol itself is not a legal or regulatory document; it is the CCTV User Group's own practical analysis, built from the same national guidance a police force's demand should be based on, including the College of Policing's Vetting Authorised Professional Practice, and refined through real demands its members have received. Every letter and summary the toolkit produces states which version of the Protocol it was built from, so you can always trace an answer back to the guidance behind it.

No document that governs police vetting says so. The Framework Service Level Agreement published by the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner in April 2026 describes, in Section 4 of the Framework Service Level Agreement, a nationally agreed minimum standard of NPPV Level 2 Abbreviated, but it names no agreement, body or date, and no earlier edition of the Framework Service Level Agreement named any level. It is guidance for drafting a service level agreement rather than a vetting instrument. The College of Policing Vetting Code of Practice 2023 is the statutory code, and paragraph 5.5 of the Vetting Code of Practice 2023 makes the Vetting Authorised Professional Practice the national standard. Section 5.8 of the Vetting Authorised Professional Practice prescribes no vetting level for council CCTV staff, and paragraph 5.6.7 of the Vetting Authorised Professional Practice requires each police force to assess the level for each role case by case. If a police force relies on the Framework Service Level Agreement, the toolkit's letter asks it to identify the agreement it refers to and to say whether its decision rests on the Framework Service Level Agreement or on its own assessment of your role.

Yes. See a sample output for a full worked example: a fictional council, a fictional police force, and the real position summary, five-test analysis and letter the toolkit would produce for that scenario.

Free for CCTV User Group members: the letter, the position summary and the evidence checklist are all included. For everyone else, the evidence checklist is free once your application is approved, and there is a one-off payment of £250 to unlock the tailored letter and position summary for the assessment you have already run.

Membership already covers the cost of building and maintaining the Protocol and the toolkit for CCTV User Group members. The one-off payment lets a non-member organisation use the same tool without joining the CCTV User Group, and goes towards keeping the Protocol current as police forces' positions change.

Every application is checked by a real person at the CCTV User Group, not approved automatically, so that access stays limited to genuine councils and contractors rather than being open to anyone on the internet. An application from a recognised government email domain is verified automatically; every other work email address is checked by hand before an access code is issued.

There is no fixed processing time built into the toolkit itself, since every application is checked by a person. If you are working to a deadline set by a police force's letter, say so in your application, or email vetting-support@cctvusergroup.com and mention the deadline so your application can be prioritised.

You confirm your work email address by following the link sent to it, and the CCTV User Group reviews your application. If it is approved as a CCTV User Group member, every output is free and unlocked as soon as you run the assessment. If it is approved as a non-member, you can run the assessment and see a summary straight away, then unlock the full letter and position summary for the one-off payment. If it is not approved, you are told why. Either way you are emailed a single-use access code that runs one assessment.

It is kept for 36 months so you can come back to your results, and used only to run your assessment and produce your documents. Full detail, including how to have your information deleted early, is on the Privacy page.

No. There is no analytics or advertising tracking anywhere on this site, and no tracking pixels or rewritten links in the emails it sends.

The CCTV User Group developed this toolkit, its analysis and its letter wording with AI assistance, in the same way as the Airwave Vetting Protocol and the supporting papers it is built from. Every test, quotation and question was checked against the source documents by the User Group before publication, and each output states the versions it was produced from. No AI is involved when you use the toolkit: your answers are tested against fixed rules, and your letter is assembled from fixed wording. Nothing you enter is sent to any AI service.

Email vetting-support@cctvusergroup.com and one of the team will help. Say which organisation you are writing about.

No national document sets one. Section 4 of the Framework Service Level Agreement, as revised in April 2026, refers to a “nationally agreed minimum standard of NPPV Level 2 (Abbreviated)”, but no such agreement has been identified. Our page on vetting levels for local authority CCTV staff explains what the national documents actually say.

The Glossary covers every term the toolkit uses, in plain English, along with the documents it refers to.