Police will have a nationally searchable automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system in place by June.

Officers using the technology will be able to find out in four seconds if a vehicle is uninsured, stolen, known to be involved in a crime or under surveillance.

The system can monitor as many as 36,000 number plates per hour and will be served by thousands of cameras trained on all major highways, important back roads and key junctions across the country.

Captured licence plate images will be read by the computer system and cross-referenced with police databases of numbers linked to crime or suspected perpetrators. It will also check DVLA and insurance sources to help identify vehicles that are unregistered, untaxed, uninsured or without a valid MOT.

The system is being developed by the Police IT Organisation and supplier Anite on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

‘Our ANPR trials resulted in a major increase in the average number of arrests per officer,’ said ACPO national ANPR coordinator John Dean.

‘The system will revolutionise policing. Our aim is to deny criminals the use of the roads.’

What do you think? Email us at: mailto:feedback@computing.co.uk