CCTV Servicing and Health Checks

When a CCTV health check makes sense

Most CCTV problems are discovered at the worst moment: someone needs footage of an incident and finds the recorder stopped writing weeks ago. A health check is how you find that out on a quiet day instead. It suits systems that have not been looked at for a year or more, systems that came with a property or a business you took over, and systems that feel slower or patchier than they used to.

This page covers a one-off visit. If you would rather have visits booked in automatically, our maintenance contracts page covers that arrangement.

What we check

• Hard drive health: SMART data read, reallocated sectors noted, recording confirmed continuous on every channel.
• Retention: how many days are actually stored against how many you need.
• Cameras: lenses and domes cleaned, focus and angle checked by day and with infrared at night.
• Cabling and power: connectors, junction boxes and PoE voltages checked for water and drop-off.
• Recorder: firmware reviewed, clock and time sync confirmed so footage is usable as evidence.
• Remote viewing: app login, live view and playback tested away from your own WiFi.
• Security: default or shared passwords replaced, user accounts reviewed.

Systems we did not install

We service CCTV regardless of who fitted it, including Hikvision, Dahua, Uniview and hybrid recorders. If nobody knows the recorder password, we can often recover access; our Hikvision password reset page covers that in more detail. If a recorder or camera is past its useful life, we tell you and explain which parts are still worth keeping.

What you get at the end

Anything simple, such as a loose connector, a dirty lens or a wrong clock, is fixed on the visit. Anything that needs a part is explained in writing with the reason, so you can decide. You also get a short record of the check, which is useful for insurers and for anyone who inherits the system after you.

If the visit turns up a genuine fault, such as a dead camera or a failing drive, the repair is booked through our CCTV repairs service.

Where we carry out CCTV servicing

Engineers travel from our Chatham base, covering homes within about 30 miles and businesses within about 60 miles, which includes Medway, Kent and South East London. You deal directly with the engineers, not a call centre.

Signs your CCTV is overdue a check

Some warning signs are easy to spot once you know them. Playback that jumps or has gaps, a timeline with missing hours, cameras that look hazy or washed out at night, and an app that takes longer and longer to connect all suggest something is wearing out. So does a recorder that runs hot or keeps rebooting, or a camera that drops offline in wet weather.

Less obvious is the system that seems fine but has never been tested for retention. Many owners assume they have a month of footage and discover, when they need it, that the drive only holds a few days. A health check measures what is actually stored. If the system has been running for several years without a drive change, that alone is a good reason to book a visit, because surveillance drives wear with constant writing.