Seven additional police forces across the UK are set to deploy new fleets of facial recognition vans, marking a significant expansion of the controversial surveillance technology.
Home Office funding will enable Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley and Hampshire police to adopt the new system.
These forces will join the Metropolitan Police, South Wales Police and Essex Police, which have already been using the vans for some time – to a mixed public reception.
The technology allows officers to identify individuals on watchlists by utilising cameras mounted on their vehicles, which film surrounding areas.
However, the rollout has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties and anti-racism groups, who cite the software's "well-documented history of inaccurate outcomes and racial bias," particularly ahead of the Notting Hill Carnival.
In response, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley acknowledged the software was “limited” during its use at the 2016 and 2017 Carnivals but insisted it has made “considerable progress” since then.
A recent Met report claimed a remarkably low false alert rate of just 0.0003 per cent from more than three million scans projected between September 2024 and September 2025.
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, such as 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 that 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 facial recognition van in Redhill on 13 November.
