The Home Office has announced a sweeping programme to embed artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology across policing in England and Wales, positioning digital capability as a central pillar of the Government’s proposed new policing model.
The plans, set out in the From Local to National: A New Model for Policing White Paper (published 26 January 2026), include the creation of a National Centre for AI in Policing (“Police.AI”), a national Live Facial Recognition (LFR) capability, and a new regulatory framework intended to govern the deployment of advanced technologies.
The Government will invest £115 million over three years to establish Police.AI, a national hub responsible for identifying, testing and scaling AI tools across all forces. The centre will act as a central clearing house for innovation, enabling Chief Constables to adopt AI “responsibly and in a way which builds and maintains public consent”.
Police.AI will also maintain a ‘public-facing registry’ of AI systems used by forces, including information on reliability testing and safeguards. The White Paper describes this as a transparency measure designed to bolster legitimacy and public trust.
Major expansion of Live Facial Recognition
A major expansion of facial recognition is planned. The Government will fund 40 new Live Facial Recognition (LFR) vans, forming a nationally coordinated capability aimed at intercepting violent and sexual offenders in high‑crime areas.
The White Paper considers LFR to be a key tool for “catching more criminals” and speeding up investigations. However, it also acknowledges the need for “ethical, robust and responsible” deployment, promising a new regulatory framework with “strong oversight and accountability”.
AI to automate police workloads
The proposals represent the most significant expansion of AI‑enabled policing powers ever proposed in the UK, with national coordination, mandatory standards and substantial investment marking a decisive shift in the Government’s approach.
The reforms emphasise the use of AI to reduce administrative burdens and free up officers for frontline duties. The Government intends to roll out AI‑powered tools to automate manual processes, including crime recording, data entry and case management.
The White Paper argues that modern technology can “link data sources and analyse these in seconds rather than weeks”, enabling forces to spot patterns of offending and dangerous behaviour more quickly. This is presented as a foundation for a “next generation national intelligence service”.
National standards and mandatory adoption
Under the proposed National Police Service (NPS), AI and technology standards will become mandatory, ending the current patchwork of adoption across the 43‑force structure. The NPS will set national requirements for data, technology, training and workforce planning, with the aim of ensuring consistent capability across England and Wales.
The government promises a new statutory framework governing AI and facial recognition, though details remain limited. The White Paper commits to:
- a regulatory regime with “strong oversight and accountability”;
- mandatory reliability testing before operational deployment;
- national standards for ethical use; and
- transparency obligations via the Police.AI registry.
The White Paper positions AI as essential to tackling modern crime, noting that “90% of crime now has a digital component”. Ministers argue that without rapid technological modernisation, policing risks falling further behind increasingly sophisticated criminal activity.
