United Kingdom, Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire Police
Live Facial Recognition
TrialOfficial publicationPAI-61216CBC
- Body
- Northamptonshire Police
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Area
- Northamptonshire
- Technology
- Live Facial Recognition
- Supplier
- Not stated in the source
- Status
- Trial
Being tested in live conditions under a time-limited pilot or trial. - Stage
- In use now
- Since
- July 2023
- Legal basis
- Not stated in the source
- Oversight
- Not stated in the source
- Evidence
- Official publication
Police force, government department or public body publication - Source
- Northamptonshire Police live facial recognition page and deployment register
- Last checked
- Record code
PAI-61216CBC
Notes
Established by Northamptonshire Police's own live facial recognition page and the deployment register it publishes, both read on 9 September 2026. The force's own wording is that it "is trialling the use of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology for the purposes of preventing and detecting crime and protecting the public", which is why the status is recorded as trial rather than operational. The published register lists deployments from 8 July 2023 onwards. The first six are at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone across 2023, 2024 and 2025, with watchlists ranging from 778 to 3,949 and no alerts recorded at any of them. Town centre deployments begin on 28 November 2025 at Abington Street and Fish Street in Northampton, with a watchlist of 3,317, eight alerts of which seven were true and one false, and three arrests. Further deployments follow in Kettering, Wellingborough, Corby, Northampton and Daventry, the most recent listed being 10 July 2026 at Foundry Place and Bowen Square in Daventry. The register was read twice in this run and gave the same first and last rows both times. Local reporting by the Northampton Chronicle & Echo on 10 December 2025 adds that seven arrests followed the first four town centre deployments and that the van used was loaned from Bedfordshire Police; that is secondary reporting, not a force document, and is recorded here as such. Vendor, legal basis and oversight are deliberately left empty. The force page links a legal mandate document, a data protection impact assessment, an equality and wellbeing impact assessment and a deployment policy, but states none of their contents on the page itself and names no supplier, and none of those documents was read in this run.
Live Facial Recognition elsewhere in United Kingdom
See them in the tracker| Deployment | Country | Supplier | Since | Status | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Transport PoliceLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomLondon rail and Underground network | NEC (NeoFace M40) | 2026 | Trial | |
| Metropolitan PoliceLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomLondon | NEC (NeoFace) | 2020 | Operational | |
| South Wales PoliceLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomWales | NEC (NeoFace) | 2017 | Operational | |
| Essex PoliceLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomForce area | Corsight AI (Apollo 4), with Digital Barriers | 2024 | Operational | |
| West Yorkshire PoliceLive and Retrospective Facial Recognition | United KingdomForce area | Not specified in source | 2025 | Operational | |
| Greater Manchester PoliceLive and Retrospective Facial Recognition | United KingdomForce area | Not specified in source | 2025 | Operational | |
| Police ScotlandLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomScotland | Not applicable -- not yet deployed | 2024 | Proposed | |
| Merseyside PoliceLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomMerseyside, including Southport and Birkenhead town centres | — | 2025 | Operational | |
| Thames Valley PoliceLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomThames Valley, first deployed in Oxford city centre | — | 2025 | Operational | |
| Bedfordshire PoliceLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomBedfordshire | NEC (NeoFace Watch), according to NEC | 2025 | Operational | |
| Surrey PoliceLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomSurrey | NEC Software | 2025 | Operational | |
| Sussex PoliceLive Facial Recognition | United KingdomSussex | NEC Software | 2025 | Operational |