Automatic number plate recognition in the United Kingdom

Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) is a technology for automatically reading vehicle number plates. The Home Office states ANPR is used by law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom to help detect, deter and disrupt criminality including tackling organised crime groups and terrorists.

Vehicle movements on UK roads are recorded by a network of around 8500 cameras capturing between 25 and 35 million ANPR ‘read’ records daily. These records are stored for up to two years in the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC), which can be accessed, analysed and used as evidence as part of investigations by UK law enforcement agencies.

The Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition government placed ANPR under statutory regulation through the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. This established a right in law to collect the data, and placed controls on its use, storage and access by third parties.

In 2005, the Independent reported that by the following year, most motorways, main roads, town centres, London's congestion charge zone, ports and petrol station forecourts have been covered by CCTV camera networks using automatic number plate recognition. Their report said existing traffic cameras in towns and cities are being converted to read number plates automatically as part of the new national surveillance network.

"What we're trying to do as far as we can is to stitch together the existing camera network rather than install a huge number of new cameras," - Mr Whiteley chairman of the ANPR steering committee said.

Some cameras may be disguised for covert operations but the majority will be ordinary CCTV traffic cameras converted to read number plates. Every police force will also have a fleet of specially fitted police vans with ANPR cameras. All data generated is fed to The National ANPR Data Centre.

One camera can cover many motorway lanes. Just two ANPR devices, for instance, cover north and south movements through the 27 lanes of the Dartford crossing toll area on the Thames. Whiteley said the intention eventually was to move from the "low thousands" of cameras to the "high thousands".

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