ANPR Costs

Please release the amount of money spent in each of the last four financial years on Automatic Numberplate Recognition Techonology.

Further, if you can answer the following within the time limit, please say how many cameras the force operates and how many hits they received in each of the last four years.

In accordance with section 1(1) (b) of the Act our response is provided below;

ANPR Costs: No direct ANPR budget exists. Cost would necessarily include 'back office' support and some, but not all, equipment support, however this would not capture the costs covered by central government, BCU budgets, vehicles / officers allocated to both ad hoc and directed ANPR operations. This would also include the petrol for vehicles maintaining the cameras, maintenance costs, purchase etc. Costs may be embedded into many different budgets. There is no requirement to create information to respond to an FOI request so therefore no information is held.

You may find the information contained in the following ACPO document to be of use.

ACPO Website

Cheshire Constabulary currently operate 34 fixed cameras, 22 'in vehicle' systems and 2 portable systems. Cheshire Constabulary currently retain ANPR data for 2 years, subject to weeding. The following is a breakdown of ANPR captures from Cheshire cameras that have matched against an intelligence source over the last 2 years.