South Wales Police

Deployed for public events including Six Nations rugby fixtures, with continued operations through 2026 including the Swansea Airshow in July 2026 and deployments in Cardiff and Pontypridd in June and July 2026. R (Bridges) v South Wales Police remains the governing appellate authority on this force's use and has not been disturbed.

The force has spent roughly £3.5m on the programme, with false alert rates falling over time on its own figures. Separately, South Wales Police has trained over 500 officers to use a handheld facial recognition mobile app, making it a significant operator-initiated facial recognition deployment as well as a live one.

The Liberty Investigates and Times investigation into children on facial recognition watchlists found South Wales Police had placed 632 people under 18 on its watchlists since 2022, including six children under 13. The force's own guidance states no one under 13 should be included, and the College of Policing notes the technology performs less reliably on younger children.

Update, November 2026. The Information Commissioner's Office published an executive summary of its consensual audit of South Wales Police and Gwent Police (version 1.0, August 2025). It rated live facial recognition 'high' assurance and states that the live rating applies to South Wales Police only. It made six recommendations on live facial recognition (one high, four medium, one low), mainly on consistent retention periods and review of policies, and recorded as areas of assurance that data flows are mapped, that the force can show the lawful provenance of images used for watchlist templates, and that a data protection impact assessment procedure with data protection officer oversight is in place. The summary describes itself as an exception report, tailored to the two forces and not intended for comparison with other ICO audit reports; the ICO's announcement of 20 August 2025 called the audit "a snapshot in time" and said it "does not give the green light to all police forces". The summary names no supplier. The ICO's later outcomes report of 18 August 2026 could not be read in this review.