Overview
- The Home Office’s reform plan funds 40 additional live facial recognition vans, taking the fleet to 50 for use in town centres and high‑crime hotspots.
- A High Court case brought by youth worker Shaun Thompson, supported by Big Brother Watch, contests the Met’s policy on privacy grounds after he says he was misidentified and detained.
- Claimants told the court the Met conducted 231 deployments in 2025 scanning about four million faces, including more than 50,000 people at Oxford Circus in four and a half hours on December 17.
- The Met defends the technology as lawful and effective, citing more than 1,700 arrests since early 2024, an exceptionally low false‑alert rate, and immediate deletion of data for non‑matches.
- A public consultation on regulation is still open as the government advances a bespoke legal framework and wider AI policing plans, with a judgment expected at a later date.