The College of Policing has awarded the University of Birmingham a contract to evaluate officer-initiated facial recognition software used by South Wales Police, with the research focused primarily on productivity outcomes for policing.
The award is worth £64,200 excluding VAT, or £77,040 including VAT. Its scheduled contract period runs from October 12 to March 31, 2027. The official procurement record identifies October 6 as the award date and October 12 as the earliest date the contract can be signed.
The contract notice was published on Friday. The award is listed as a below-threshold procurement for research services. It names the University of Birmingham as the supplier of research services under procurement reference COP39_2026, titled Evaluation of Officer Initiated Facial Recognition Tools.
Officer-initiated facial recognition, also called operator-initiated facial recognition or OIFR, is a mobile application used after an officer engages with a person whose identity is uncertain. The Home Office describes it as allowing officers to photograph that person and check their identity without first arresting them and taking them into custody.
The Home Office identifies South Wales Police and Gwent Police as users of the technology. Its examples include identifying a missing teenager who refused to provide his details and identifying a man wanted under a European Arrest Warrant who gave suspected false information.
The mobile workflow differs from live facial recognition, which compares images of people passing a camera in a public place against a watchlist. Retrospective facial recognition instead searches previously collected images, such as CCTV footage, during an investigation.
The evaluation comes amid wider scrutiny of how police deploy facial matching. The Information Commissioner’s Office recently published findings from five police facial-recognition audits, including reviews covering South Wales and Gwent. Those audits produced 107 recommendations, with priorities including stronger senior oversight, staff training, image-retention controls and more consistent accuracy testing.
Separate independent evaluations of Essex Police’s live facial recognition program examined data protection, technical accuracy and operational use following a deployment pause.
The South Wales procurement commissions research into productivity in the officer-initiated workflow. The College of Policing is the contracting authority, while the University of Birmingham will provide the evaluation service.
Sources: Find a Tender, Home Office
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
