UK to put police facial recognition under a new law, with a watchdog that can seek court bans

Britain's government plans to write the rules for police facial recognition into a dedicated law, overseen by a new independent body with power to enforce them. The Home Office, the UK's interior ministry, set out the plans on November 4, 2026, in its response to a public consultation that ran from December 4, 2025, to February 12, 2026. The response describes high-level proposals. It contains no draft bill and no date for one.

Police in England and Wales already use software that compares faces with images of people they are looking for, under what the Home Office calls a “vast patchwork system” of legal requirements. The plan pairs safeguards with expansion. The government has put £11 million into tripling the number of live facial recognition vans, and when it opened the consultation it said new laws would let forces use the technology with greater confidence and more often.

What the framework would do

• Limits on use: a specific law would require facial recognition to be intelligence led and proportionate, with officers deploying it only where they believe wanted people may be present.
• Oversight: a single body would take account of the current roles of the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner and the Forensic Science Regulator. It could enforce the rules and, in extreme cases, pursue an injunction against a force.
• Testing: technology would have to be adequately tested, scientifically valid and monitored, with independent checks for bias by age, gender and race.
• Authorization: the legislation would set the minimum police rank that can approve operational use.
• Scope: rules for facial images would build on those for DNA and fingerprints, with a way to add other biometrics later. Inferential tools, which try to read emotions or actions, and overt surveillance tools would also be covered. The framework would also apply to other public bodies, for law enforcement and limited safeguarding purposes.
• Businesses: a separate code of practice would cover private companies, including shops, that use facial recognition against crime.

The government declined to make the seriousness of a crime the only test. It says seriousness must be weighed alongside the scale and nature of a deployment and its effect on individual rights, with the law setting specific criteria. It also intends to make public participation in oversight a legal requirement for police forces and the new body.

The numbers behind the decision

The Home Office also cites a 10.5% fall in overall crime in the Croydon area against the previous year, as reported by the Metropolitan Police. Its release gives no comparison with an area without cameras, so it does not show how much of the fall came from them.

The government's summary of responses records concerns including routine mass surveillance, a chilling effect on lawful activity and the treatment of children. Some respondents wanted facial recognition prohibited at protests and demonstrations, and a consistent view was that the law should protect children from being the subjects of searches. The government agrees the technology has the potential to interfere with privacy, free expression and peaceful assembly, but its response does not commit to either limit.

How it compares

The European Union takes a different approach. The European Commission's summary of the AI Act lists real-time remote biometric identification for law enforcement in publicly accessible spaces among the practices it prohibits. The European Parliament's guide says exceptions cover a limited number of serious cases, and that identification after a significant delay is allowed to prosecute serious crimes and only with court approval. Britain, outside the EU, is setting its own rules.

On bias, the Home Office says it has independently tested a new retrospective algorithm that proved “highly accurate and without bias” and will be available to forces from next year, but the release does not give the results. A 2019 study by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, covering 189 algorithms from 99 developers, found that most showed differences in performance across demographic groups, and that the outcome depended on the algorithm and how it was used.

What comes next

The government says it will publish a full impact assessment and a revised equalities assessment when legislation is brought forward, and will develop the police code of practice in consultation with the new regulator.

The benefits are clear, but we must ensure that its use is fair, safe and proportionate.