Five police forces drop Palantir pilot as funding ends

The East Midlands Special Operations Unit (EMSOU), which covers Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire, will end its trial of Palantir’s Foundry platform this month.

The decision follows an assessment of what the technology could deliver alongside the unit’s future funding arrangements.

Ian Green, assistant chief constable in charge of EMSOU, said the pilot had been conducted to assess how the technology could support operational policing while maintaining high standards of accountability and ethics.

“Following the scoping work and assessment of what it would deliver, including our future funding streams, we have taken the decision to not take this project further,” he said.

The pilot was part of Project Nectar, which was designed to give officers a single view of information drawn from multiple systems and to automate some processes that would otherwise require manual work.

A separate Palantir pilot involving the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit is understood to be continuing.

The unit covers Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Norfolk and Suffolk, meaning the decision in the East Midlands does not represent an end to Palantir’s work with regional police operations.

Palantir said its technology had delivered benefits to British policing, including helping Bedfordshire Police identify about 1,000 women in a year whose partners had histories of domestic violence through Clare’s Law checks.

The company also said its work with the Metropolitan Police had helped identify serious corruption and criminality and had produced significant savings in the analysis of seized mobile phones.

The East Midlands decision comes amid wider questions over the use of Palantir by UK police forces.

A recent investigation found that at least six forces had spent a combined £7.8m on Palantir technology since 2023, while a separate analysis found that 12 forces were involved in pilot programmes with the company.

The Metropolitan Police’s proposed £50m expansion of its relationship with Palantir was blocked by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime earlier this year amid concerns over procurement and value for money. Palantir is challenging that decision through the courts.

The company has defended its use of pilot programmes, saying government procurement guidance encourages public bodies to test new services before putting work out to tender.