New facial recognition vans rolled out for use by seven more police forces

A new fleet of facial recognition vans are to be rolled out by seven police forces across the UK in an expanded pilot programme.

The Metropolitan Police, South Wales Police and Essex Police have been using the facial recognition vans for some time to mixed receptions.

The software enables officers to use cameras mounted on top of their vans to locate people on their watchlists by filming the surrounding area.

Home Office funding has been provided for new facial recognition vans in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley and Hampshire.

The Met released a report last month which said that from September 2024 to September 2025 the software had a false alert rate of 0.0003% from more than three million scans.

Civil liberties and anti-racism groups criticised the software for having a “well-documented history of inaccurate outcomes and racial bias” ahead of the Notting Hill Carnival this year.

In response, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley acknowledged that the software was “limited” when it was used at the Carnival in 2016 and 2017 but has made “considerable progress” since then.

Ahead of the new rollout, Chief Inspector Andy Hill, of Surrey Police, was asked if he still harboured concerns about false readings from the technology.

He said: “There’s been a lot of development with the software, a lot of national testing to give us confidence in the software and, at the last Notting Hill Carnival this year, their positive alerts were much higher.”

The police watchlists uploaded to the van are bespoke and will include details and photos of wanted people and people subject to court orders like sex offenders.

If their faces are scanned by the van’s cameras it will alert the officer to the match, and they can verify whether the comparison is correct and take action.

“It’s a positive step in terms of using the latest technology available to us, and it’s about pursuing criminals, it’s about investigating crime thoroughly and also reassuring the public that we are out and about and we are visible and we’re doing our job,” Mr Hill said.

Across the seven new centres, 10 new vans are to be deployed including one in Surrey and another in Sussex which will at times be used in tandem.

The police have said that images of people walking past the van which do not set off an alert will be deleted in less than a second.

Mr Hill said: “We want to be as open and transparent about our deployments, we publish them on our website at least seven days in advance, and we’ll publish the results afterwards as well,

“And during the deployment, we’ve got signage up to inform people that they’re entering a zone of live facial recognition with information on that, and also they can talk to any of our officers at any time about the technology.”

Surrey Police will be deploying a Live Facial Recognition van in Redhill on November 13.