Police to deploy dozens of new facial recognition vans under reform plan

The technology will be deployed in town centres and areas identified as high-crime hotspots

Police forces across England and Wales are to receive dozens of new live facial recognition (LFR) vans and expanded AI tools under what ministers describe as the biggest overhaul of policing in generations.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the reforms were needed because officers were "fighting crime in a digital age with analogue methods".

The Metropolitan Police says its use of LFR technology between September 2024 and September 2025 led to 962 arrests. During that period, 203 deployments generated more than 2,000 alerts, including 10 false positive identifications.

Under the plans, the number of LFR vans used by police will increase from 10 to 50. The technology will be deployed in town centres and areas identified as high-crime hotspots.

The government plans to spend more than £26 million on a national facial recognition system, alongside £11.6 million to expand LFR capabilities. A new legal framework governing the use of the technology will also be introduced.

AI tools and a new national body

The expansion forms part of a wide-ranging Police Reform White Paper [pdf].

Mahmood told MPs that all police forces in England and Wales would be given new AI tools designed to reduce the time officers spend on paperwork and administrative tasks, allowing more time for frontline policing.

More than £140 million will be invested in new technologies, she said, including £115 million over the next three years for a new National Centre for AI in Policing, known as Police.AI.

The centre will identify, test and expand the use of AI across forces and publish a national register of how the technology is being used.

Initially, Police.AI will focus on automating administrative work such as analysing CCTV footage, preparing case files and classifying crime reports.

It will build on existing tools, including a transcription system that officials say has already saved more than 33,000 hours of investigators' time.

The white paper also proposes creating a new National Police Service - described by ministers as a "British FBI".

It would bring together the National Crime Agency, the National Police Air Service, Counter Terror Policing and National Roads Policing into a single organisation responsible for tackling terrorism and serious organised crime.

Work to establish the new body will begin this year, although it is expected to be completed in the next parliament.

A separate review will examine how many of the current 43 local police forces should be merged, with recommendations due this summer.

Some mergers are expected to take place before the next general election.

The Home Office said the proposals represented the most significant reform of policing since forces were professionalised around 200 years ago.

Arrests and concerns

The Met's use of LFR is currently being challenged in the High Court by anti-knife crime campaigner Shaun Thompson, supported by the privacy group Big Brother Watch.

Thompson was stopped by officers in Croydon last year after being wrongly identified by the system. Police officers demanded his fingerprints before realising the mistake.

The Ada Lovelace Institute and several privacy organisations have urged the government to tighten regulation of facial recognition, citing concerns about its growing and largely unregulated use by police and private companies.

A Home Office study published in December found that the facial recognition system used by UK police was significantly less reliable for certain ethnic groups and genders.