Metropolitan Police

Handheld devices allowing an officer to scan and identify a person on the spot. The Mayor of London confirmed in February 2026 that the Metropolitan Police was trialling the technology, following repeated questioning by Green Party London Assembly Member Zoe Garbett, and at a point when the force's own website stated it did not use operator-initiated facial recognition. Liberty Investigates reported that West Yorkshire Police documents anticipated deployment in 2026, though the force said no date had been set, and that Thames Valley had not confirmed timing.

Dr Daragh Murray, who co-authored the 2019 independent review of the Metropolitan Police's live facial recognition trials with Professor Pete Fussey while both were at the University of Essex, has questioned whether handheld deployment can meet the same safeguards. Murray and Fussey jointly submitted a response to the Home Office facial recognition consultation in February 2026. An earlier version of this entry attributed that independent review to Queen Mary University of London, which was incorrect: the review was the Essex study.

South Wales Police has separately trained over 500 officers to use a handheld facial recognition mobile app.

Recorded for the Metropolitan Police only. The Home Office factsheet states that South Wales Police and Gwent Police are using operator-initiated facial recognition; they now have their own records. West Yorkshire Police and Thames Valley Police are not recorded until a source confirms use.

Update, November 2026. A London Assembly press release on london.gov.uk (created 26 February 2026, updated 6 July 2026), reporting the Mayor's answer to Zoë Garbett AM, describes a six-month pilot with around 100 devices and about £763,000 allocated; Computer Weekly reports the same figures. It does not give a start date, so the end of the pilot cannot be dated and the record stays as a trial. Computer Weekly reports that the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime and the London Policing Ethics Panel will oversee use, that the Met said it would be rolled out initially to a small number of officers, and that the Mayor said it may not be rolled out. Liberty Investigates and The Times (5 May 2026) quoted the Home Office as saying it has no plans to roll out operator-initiated facial recognition nationally and that decisions remain a matter for individual forces. They reported that in Thames Valley and West Yorkshire, which have explored adopting it, the technology would be made available through Motorola's Pronto policing app, and described the Met as "planning to test the technology", which sits awkwardly with the Mayor's February confirmation that the Met is trialling it. No source read names the supplier or app used by the Met. No result, extension or end of the Met pilot had been published in the sources read as of 3 November 2026.