How long is archived evidence kept, and how does the Photo Evidence Archive work?

The Photo Evidence Archive keeps an archived plot bundle for 15 years from archival, and it is built for evidential custody rather than convenience: bundles are stored write-once-read-many, in two independent cloud regions, with integrity checksums recorded so tampering would be detectable. It is the assessor-side answer to a question audits ask years later — "show me the photographic evidence for that plot".

What it costs

• £3.00 per credit, one-off, with the 15-year term included. One credit covers up to 250 MB of a single plot's bundle; a bigger bundle spends one further credit per additional 250 MB, up to 8 credits (2,000 MB) per plot.
• Bulk rates: £2.75 per credit at 50 to 99 credits, £2.50 at 100 or more.
• One bundle is one plot. Each upload is bound to a declared project and plot — combining several plots' photos into one ZIP breaches the archive terms and, more to the point, wrecks the per-plot audit trail the archive exists to preserve.

How the custody works

• Write-once-read-many (WORM). Each archived object is held under object locking for the retention term, so it cannot be altered, overwritten or deleted in the ordinary course before the term ends.
• Two regions. Every bundle is stored in two separate AWS regions, so a regional failure does not touch your evidence.
• Tamper-evidence. A SHA-256 checksum is recorded in a manifest alongside the object in both regions and can be re-verified on retrieval.
• The archive terms are honest that no storage is beyond every conceivable failure — for genuinely mission-critical evidence, the terms ask you to keep your own copy as well.

Getting a bundle back out

Retrieval is deliberate, not instant, because the archive is cold storage:

1. Request access to the bundle from the portal's evidence page.
2. The restore can take up to 48 hours; you are notified when the download is ready, and the download link is short-lived.
3. Each archived plot includes one retrieval per year. Unused retrievals roll over, up to three banked. Additional retrievals are £1 each, self-service, with no quota.

Start any retrieval well before a deadline — we recommend at least five working days. The archive does not promise delivery within a particular audit window, which is another reason the yearly included retrieval is best spent early, not on the morning an auditor calls.

End of term, extensions, and account closure

• Nothing is silently deleted at term end. You are notified, and a grace period of six months follows before anything expires.
• Extending retention costs the same number of credits the bundle originally used, and adds a further full term.
• Closing your account does not shorten the term. Evidence whose retention has been paid for is kept for its full term even after account closure, and a portable export of paid bundles is made available when you leave.