BREAKING: Palantir awarded new £10 million Contract

Palantir has won their largest singular known contract with police forces in England to-date, a newly released contract notice, published on 6 November 2026, between the controversial data-analytics company and the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire shows.

By the time the £10,093,202 contract notice appeared on Contracts Finder on 6 November, the deal had already been running for a month. The public record arrived after work started for Palantir to supply the combined units of Beds, Cambs, and Herts with its ‘BCH Foundry Platform’. It runs from the 9 of October 2026 right up until 8 October 2031.

A five-year, £10 million deal to connect and analyse police data has now been signed - but the public notice offers no contract text, no detailed account of what data will be brought together, and no link to the agreement itself.

The award notice only states that the contract is to supply ‘an enterprise-wide data integration and analytics capability, enabling the secure ingestion, linking, and analysis of data from multiple systems and sources across the policing environment’.

At least six police forces in England were already reported to have spent £7.8 million on contracts and trials relating to technology provided by Palantir as revealed by Good Law Project and Computer Weekly. Cambridgeshire was one of these, however, there has been some confusion over the continued nature of Palantir’s relationship with Cambs police.

Cambridgeshire is part of the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit, which also includes Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Norfolk, and Suffolk. The ERSOU specialises in special operations including counter-terrorism, comprising ‘investigations and intelligence teams, along with colleagues specialising in prevention, training and several other disciplines.’

Bedfordshire's Palantir iteration, part of ‘Project Nectar’, first reported by Liberty Investigates, was described as a “real-time data-sharing network across Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire police, Regional Policing, UK Policing and partner agencies”, and both Beds and Herts were already confirmed to have had their own instances of Palantir’s Foundry software.

Beds had an initial contract worth £750,000, but scrutiny of spend records indicates a much larger amount of money spent with the force, totalling over £2.9 million and dating back to 2023. The Herts contract was worth £750,000, echoing the initial Beds contract iteration as part of Nectar.

However, the nature of Cambridgeshire Police’s relationship with Palantir has been subject to some degree of discrepancy. The new agreement seems to cover all three forces combined.

As the initial investigation into spend with Palantir by the police revealed, Cambs had already trialled the software, spending £11,998 in 2025, but when approached by journalists, the force said they were “aware” of “pilot work” with Palantir in their partner forces, and that “Cambridgeshire Constabulary is considering how a similar approach could support our use of data to better serve our communities”. They added that “this work is ongoing and no decisions have been made”.

However, even at the time there seemed to be little doubt by some that the force was going to get its own iteration of Foundry, apparently now reflected as part of the new contract. A Freedom of Information (FOI) disclosure to Good Law Project from Bedfordshire police confirmed that “Cambridgeshire will have their own” Palantir contract, seemingly contradicting Cambridgeshire’s own press office.

The future of Project Nectar and Palantir’s relationship with the police seemed to be cast into doubt earlier in the year, as the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) blocked a £50 million deal with Palantir, which will now be going back out to open tender (and which Palantir are free to bid on once again, now that Palantir and MOPAC have settled a legal dispute relating to the deal).

Democracy for Sale also reported in September 2026 that five police forces in another region, the East Midlands Special Operations Unit (EMSOU) had dropped the tool, which campaigners have argued could lead to “indiscriminate mass surveillance”.

The five forces within the EMSOU, Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire, were part of a two-year trial, but the regional assistant chief constable for the unit told the outlet at the time that “We have taken the decision to not take this project further”, following “scoping work” of “funding streams” and an “assessment of what it would deliver”.

The new agreement with BCH brings the total spent on Palantir software in contracts and trials by police forces in England to nearly £18 million, and adds further confusion over Palantir’s future collaboration with UK police forces.

Beyond its other known contracts with police forces, the company has also won a five-year, £9 million contract to replace the National Firearms Licensing Management System (NFLMS) for all 43 police forces in England and Wales.

Speaking to the Eye, Deputy Director of the Citizens Rebecca Vincent said: "It's extremely disappointing to see police forces enter an unprecedented new contract with Palantir, forking over eye-watering sums of taxpayer money to give Peter Thiel's surveillance firm an even larger stake in public services”. 

“The timing is also curious, with this contract quietly signed just days after nationwide protests calling to get Palantir out of the NHS, and only publicly disclosed nearly a month later. With five other police forces recently stopping their trial of this intrusive tech, why are Beds, Cambs and Herts police forces intent on bucking the trend? At the Citizens, we renew our call to get Palantir out of the British state – out of the NHS, out of our police forces, and out of public services full stop".

At time of writing, a spokesperson for the ERSOU has not responded to a request for comment.