Bedfordshire Police

Established by two Bedfordshire Police publications read on 9 September 2026: the force's live facial recognition page, and its news release "Police announce use of Live Facial Recognition across Bedfordshire", published 11 September 2025. The release describes the roll out of a new capability rather than a trial, and gives the first deployment as Friday 19 September 2025 in Bedford town centre, following earlier use at the Bedford River Festival. Superintendent Ian Taylor is named as the force's LFR strategic lead and Police and Crime Commissioner John Tizard states that he agreed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Chief Constable. The current force page publishes a table of planned deployments in Bedford and Luton town centres through September 2026 and states that the force is "now at a stage where we are confident in its ability to accurately identify missing people or people of interest". That continuing published deployment schedule, and the force's own framing of the September 2025 launch as a roll out rather than a trial, are the basis for recording the status as operational. Legal basis is deliberately left empty: the force page cites the Data Protection Act 2018, MOPI and the Criminal Procedures and Investigations Act 1996 in relation to retention of data, and section 60AA of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 in relation to face coverings, but names no statutory power for the deployment itself. Neither force publication names a supplier; the vendor field rests only on the supplier's own case study, described in the update below. Unlike Essex, Surrey and Northamptonshire, the force publishes forthcoming deployments only and carries no historical register of past deployments with watchlist sizes, alerts or outcomes; the only arrest and alert figures recorded here are the supplier's.

Update, November 2026. An undated NEC Software Solutions case study (its web address indicates June 2026; a supplier document, so its figures are company claims) says Bedfordshire Police uses NEC's NeoFace Watch live facial recognition. It says that between September 2025 and May 2026 the force made 43 deployments scanning over 788,000 faces, that 135 alerts led to 127 disposals (57 arrests, 63 managed offender condition checks and 7 alternative disposals), and that no false alerts were reported. It says the force won Home Office funding for two LFR vans in 2025 and is supporting neighbouring East of England forces with the vans and operating staff, and that South Wales Police provided vans and officers for the force's use at the Bedford River Festival in 2024. The case study quotes the force's strategic lead, Superintendent Ian Taylor, and says the force has operational guidelines, a new AI Ethics Board that reviews use of the technology, and a public engagement programme. The vendor field is filled on the strength of this supplier document only; the force's own pages do not name the supplier.