How to provide date stamped photographic evidence in accordance with DCLG minimum evidence requirements.

Extract from Appendix 5 Table 1: minimum evidence requirements.

Photographs shall be dated within the image to provide some reassurance that they relate to the property being assessed and the date of the assessment.
Electronic files shall be acceptable if there is a reasonably secure means of dating the file.
Photographs embedded in e.g. WORD files or otherwise altered to reduce file size for transmission purposes shall be dated within the image. The master images shall be retained in EAs’ archives for possible inspection by Schemes or DCLG

How to upload the required photos along with proof of ‘date taken’.

If your camera does not have the ability to embed a date and time stamp onto your photos, proof may be obtained for audit purposes by using the following method.

Download your photos from your camera as per normal and save them in a file. See example below

You may note the ‘date Picture taken’ by hovering the mouse over an image. A box will appear containing the meta data of the photo which includes the date taken.

If you right click on the title bar you are able to add a further column called date created which lists the date created for each of the photos in your list.

Take a screen shot of this page including the additional column, to save as proof of ‘date taken’ and save as your first image in a blank word document.

If your image is simply numbered, as per the above example,and not titled to give a description of the photograph (e.g. Front elevation.jpg loft insulation.jpg) a second image will need to be provided showing the files as thumbnails.

Before taking ascreenshot of the page please hover the mouse over one of the images to produce the meta data information box.

Save this second image in your Word document.

Now select all the photos by ‘selecting all’ ‘ctrl A’

Now ‘copy’ the photos, by either pressing ‘ctrl C’ or ‘right click’ your mouse and select copy.

Paste your photos into the word document by either pressing ‘ctrl V’ or right click the mouse and press ‘paste’

Now save the document and upload on the BRE portal as part of your evidence.

18.09.2012 KG