A public record · United Kingdom
The surveillance technology the United Kingdom's police forces operate
Which forces operate live facial recognition, number-plate recognition (ANPR), drones, and body-worn video — where, with a citation behind every entry. By police force area; the oversight around each system is the next layer of the record.
The observatory
Deployments on the public record, aggregated by police force area. Filter by technology; select a force area for its full record.
Source: the public record — each force's published deployment records and UK government publications (Crown material under the Open Government Licence v3.0); per-entry citations on each record · retrieved July 2026
By force
England
| Force area | Deployments |
|---|---|
| Bedfordshire | 2 |
| Essex | 2 |
| Metropolitan | 2 |
| Norfolk | 2 |
| Northamptonshire | 2 |
| Thames Valley | 2 |
| Avon and Somerset | 1 |
| Cambridgeshire | 1 |
| Cheshire | 1 |
| City of London | 1 |
| Cleveland | 1 |
| Cumbria | 1 |
| Derbyshire | 1 |
| Devon and Cornwall | 1 |
| Dorset | 1 |
| Durham | 1 |
| Gloucestershire | 1 |
| Greater Manchester | 1 |
| Hampshire | 1 |
| Hertfordshire | 1 |
| Humberside | 1 |
| Kent | 1 |
| Lancashire | 1 |
| Leicestershire | 1 |
| Lincolnshire | 1 |
| Merseyside | 1 |
| North Yorkshire | 1 |
| Northumbria | 1 |
| Nottinghamshire | 1 |
| South Yorkshire | 1 |
| Staffordshire | 1 |
| Suffolk | 1 |
| Surrey | 1 |
| Sussex | 1 |
| Warwickshire | 1 |
| West Mercia | 1 |
| West Midlands | 1 |
| West Yorkshire | 1 |
| Wiltshire | 1 |
Wales
| Force area | Deployments |
|---|---|
| South Wales | 2 |
| Dyfed-Powys | 1 |
| Gwent | 1 |
| North Wales | 1 |
Scotland
| Force area | Deployments |
|---|---|
| Scotland | 1 |
Northern Ireland
| Force area | Deployments |
|---|---|
| Northern Ireland | 1 |
National forces
Forces with a UK-wide remit rather than a force area; they do not appear on the map.
| Force | Deployments |
|---|---|
| British Transport Police | 1 |
| Civil Nuclear Constabulary | 1 |
| Ministry of Defence Police | 1 |
| National Crime Agency | 1 |
The technologies in the United Kingdom
Counts are UK deployments on the public record; a zero means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
ANPR
Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR): camera systems that automatically capture, read, and log vehicle number plates with location and time, producing a searchable record of vehicle movements.
49 on recordFixed cameras & RTCC
Agency-operated fixed video cameras and the real-time crime centers (RTCC) that aggregate live and recorded feeds for monitoring. Extends the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Atlas, which enumerates real-time crime centers and camera registries but not standalone fixed-camera estates.
none on recordFace recognition
Software that matches faces in images or video against a reference database to identify or verify individuals.
7 on recordDrones / UAS
Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), commonly called drones, operated by an agency for overhead observation, imaging, or sensing.
none on recordGunshot detection
Networks of acoustic sensors that detect and locate suspected gunfire and alert an agency.
none on recordBody-worn & dashcam
Officer body-worn and in-vehicle dashboard cameras that record encounters; public access to the footage is frequently restricted.
none on recordDoorbell & camera registry
Programs that give an agency access to privately owned camera footage — doorbell-camera partnerships, citizen camera registries, and private-camera integration platforms.
none on recordCell-site simulators
adjacentDevices that mimic cell towers to locate or identify nearby mobile phones — often called Stingrays, or IMSI catchers after the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number that identifies each phone on a network. Adjacent: communications surveillance outside the visual/sensor core.
none on recordPredictive policing
adjacentSoftware that forecasts where crime may occur or who may be involved, to direct policing. Adjacent: analytics rather than a sensing deployment.
none on recordSocial-media monitoring
adjacentTools that collect and analyze public social-media activity for an agency. Adjacent: open-source/communications monitoring outside the visual/sensor core.
none on recordAbout this record
UK deployment data is compiled from the public record: each force's own published deployment records and registers — live facial recognition deployment logs where forces publish them — and UK government publications on the National ANPR Service. Each entry keeps its citation. The oversight around each system — published policy, public-access path, disclosed data-sharing — is the record's next layer, built from requests filed within the UK's access regimes (the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, and the Environmental Information Regulations); see the United Kingdom records-law analysis. Until a force's records arrive, its oversight status reads not yet requested. Full notes on the methodology page.