The UK government is proposing a new National Police Service (NPS) for England and Wales that would include a nationwide rollout of facial recognition technology and a centralized role for buying advanced policing tools.
Sky News reports that the proposal would establish a national organization led by a national police commissioner and focused on tackling serious and organized crime. As described in the report, a key feature of the plan is a national procurement function that would purchase new technology and equipment for all forces, alongside an effort to roll out facial recognition nationwide.
The NPS would consolidate several existing national capabilities under a single structure. The plan described by Sky News would bring the National Crime Agency, counter-terrorism policing, regional organized crime units, police helicopters, and national road policing into one organization, with the stated goal of improving the ability to address cross-border criminal activity while also supporting local forces.
In addition to equipment procurement, the Home Office said the NPS would set professional standards and training requirements for policing. Sky News also reported that the government is proposing local force targets related to response times and public trust, although the report did not include a start date for the new national service.
Live facial recognition is already in use in parts of the UK and has been a focus of debate over oversight and deployment standards, including the expansion of live facial recognition vans across multiple forces. Sky News reported that London’s Metropolitan Police has used live facial recognition to identify and arrest more than 1,700 suspects over two years. The force has also described expanded use of live facial recognition in London in recent updates. A national service with responsibility for facial recognition procurement could materially increase deployment scale and standardization across forces, depending on how systems are configured and how watchlists, governance, and accountability mechanisms are structured.
Sky News quoted the home secretary as saying the current policing model was built for a different century and that the NPS would attract world-class talent and use state-of-the-art technology.
Sources: Sky News
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
