Gwent Police

Confirmed use of facial recognition technology via ICO proactive audit (executive summary published 2025-2026), one of five forces audited alongside Essex Police, Leicestershire Police, West Yorkshire Police and Greater Manchester Police. The ICO's blog covers both live and retrospective facial recognition without breaking down which variant each force uses; the individual executive summary for the joint South Wales Police and Gwent Police audit settles it for Gwent, as described in the update below. 107 recommendations were made across the five forces; all accepted or partially accepted. Four areas flagged as needing urgent attention: senior oversight/accountability/training; record-keeping on what data is used and shared; ensuring retrospective FR images come from appropriate sources and aren't over-retained; and checking systems for accuracy/bias. A final audit of the Metropolitan Police is scheduled for later in 2026.

Update, November 2026. The ICO's executive summary of its audit of South Wales Police and Gwent Police (version 1.0, August 2025) rated live facial recognition 'high' assurance but states that the live rating applies to South Wales Police only. It also rated retrospective facial recognition 'high' assurance and observed, without formally rating it, an operator-initiated facial recognition pilot. Gwent Police therefore has no live facial recognition in that audit and is not among the 13 forces the Home Office factsheet of December 2025 lists as having used or currently using live facial recognition. This record is corrected to retrospective facial recognition. Gwent's operator-initiated use has its own record. The joint South Wales Police and Gwent Police policy for retrospective facial recognition (version 0.4, April 2025, review date 29 June 2026) states that the technology 'has been used by SWP since 2017 and in GWP since 2021', that the legal basis is common law policing powers with a separate Legal Mandate, and that internal oversight sits with an FRT Programme Board answering to the joint Gold Board, with the Police and Crime Commissioners' offices and national bodies (including the NPCC Facial Recognition Technology Board) also named. The policy names no supplier and does not mention the Police National Database; NEC's NeoFace M40 appears in it only as the algorithm used in a National Physical Laboratory study. The ICO's announcement of 20 August 2025 says more loosely that the two forces use facial recognition "in several ways, including live facial recognition"; the executive summary's statement that the live rating applies to South Wales Police only is the more specific source and is preferred here, and no report of a Gwent live deployment was found. The ICO outcomes report of 18 August 2026 could not be read in this review.