British Transport Police spent £320,786 testing live facial recognition at London stations and scanned more than 500,000 faces; the six-month trial produced one alert, and that person was wrongly identified

A six-month trial of live facial recognition at London railway stations cost British Transport Police (BTP) £320,786 and scanned more than 500,000 faces, but it produced just one alert from the police watchlist.

Official response and confirmed impact

That alert turned out to be a false identification, with no arrest resulting directly from the technology during the trial period.

The trial ran between February and July 2026 and involved 18 deployments at some of London’s busiest transport hubs.

How the trial workedLive facial recognition cameras compare faces passing through a particular location with images on a police watchlist.

The cameras do not treat every person as a suspect.

Incident under investigation

The findings were reported by The Guardian, which reviewed a freedom of information document obtained by Liberty Investigates.

The system is designed to identify people who may be wanted by the police or subject to court restrictions.

BTP has since extended the programme, raising fresh questions about cost, accuracy, privacy and whether live facial recognition is proportionate for use across a public transport network.