Local supermarket Booth, with stores in both Lytham and St. Anne’s, is introducing facial recognition surveillance systems, to scan every face that comes through the doors, into its 28 stores. The system ensues that images of shoppers’ faces entering the stores are compared against a Person of Interest (POI) watchlist. The intention of this surveillance is to enhance the safety and security of not only staff but also customers, along with reducing the overall level of crime within Booths locations.

Reassuring customers, Booths say that the surveillance system instantly deletes the image where no match is found. Furthermore, Booths add that the system does not store the image and this image cannot be stored, retrieved or reverse engineered.

Booths website shares this important information, ‘Live facial recognition technology is in operation within our stores. Booths takes the safety and security of colleagues and customers very seriously. Our primary aim for introducing this technology is to enhance the safety and security of our colleagues and customers along with reducing the overall level of crime within Booths locations.

The system scans every face that visits store and makes a comparison against a Person of Interest (POI) Watchlist. The system instantly deletes the image where no match is found. The system does not store this image and this image cannot be stored, retrieved or reverse engineered. Only those that have committed criminal activity on a Booths site will be added to the POI Watchlist. No images will be added to the POI Watchlist from any other external source (ie. Police, other retailers etc). Those added to the watchlist are done so for 6 months from their last offence committed on a Booths site. After this time has elapsed, they will be removed. Please contact centralservices@booths.co.uk for further questions.’