The system
that came before
Before national police infrastructure caught up, a small Somerset software company built the ANPR backoffice that helped solve a murder, charged drivers in Malta, and watched over thousands of UK forecourts — all under the sign of a swimming shark.
Origins
BigFish was developed in 2004 by a company called Genesis UK, a software company based in Cheddar, Somerset. It was designed from the ground up as a backoffice platform for Automatic Number Plate Recognition — the software layer that sits between ANPR cameras reading plates and the operational staff who act on those reads.
The architecture was well defined. A MySQL database at the core, a HTML / Java web interface on top — giving operators browser-based access to live and historical plate reads without specialist client software. In an era when enterprise software typically demanded thick clients and complex rollouts, this made BigFish unusually easy to deploy and manage.
Timeline
Nick Harris, The Development Director of Genesis UK, and his team develops BigFish at Genesis UK. The platform is designed for multi-site ANPR data aggregation, read verification, and operational alerting — all accessible from a standard web browser.
BigFish goes live as a police ANPR backoffice system in Bradford city centre — one of the UK's first operational deployments of dedicated ANPR backoffice infrastructure. Camera reads flow in real time, making vehicle movement data searchable and actionable for investigators and control room staff.
The Bradford system is used to help identify and track suspects in the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky — shot during an armed robbery in Bradford. ANPR records held in BigFish contribute to the investigation, demonstrating in the starkest possible terms what a capable backoffice system makes possible.
BigFish is deployed as the ANPR data gathering and read verification tool underpinning the original Valletta congestion charging system — one of the first such schemes in the Mediterranean. The system handled incoming plate reads at the city's access points and verified them before sending them to processing for charging.
BigFish gains significant traction on garage forecourts across the UK, used to match vehicles to fuel transactions and flag drive-offs. The swimming shark animation becomes a recognisable presence on customer-facing screens at petrol stations nationwide.
The UK police service builds and rolls out a nationally centralised ANPR back office, consolidating what had previously been fragmented force-by-force deployments. BigFish's operational success — particularly Bradford — is part of the evidence base that demonstrated the value of dedicated ANPR backoffice infrastructure at scale.
Bradford — the test that mattered
The most significant operational test of BigFish came just months after its Bradford deployment.
On 18 November 2005, PC Sharon Beshenivsky was fatally shot while responding to an armed robbery at Universal Travel in Bradford — the first female officer killed on duty in the UK in over a decade. West Yorkshire Police launched one of the largest murder investigations in the force's history.
The BigFish ANPR backoffice system, live in Bradford city centre since early that year, gave investigators access to vehicle movement records that helped identify and track the suspects. Six men were eventually convicted of the murder and associated offences.
The case made clear — before national ANPR infrastructure existed — what a local, well-designed backoffice system could do for serious crime investigation. BBC News reported on the role BigFish played in the investigation: "CCTV system tracked getaway car" (19 December 2006).
Where BigFish ran
Bradford city centre from early 2005. Used in the investigation into the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky later that year.
ANPR data gathering and read verification for the original Valletta congestion charging scheme, 2007.
Widely deployed at UK petrol stations for drive-off prevention. The swimming shark animation recognised by customers across the country.
Legacy
BigFish did not survive in the police market — it was superseded by the national ANPR back office that its own success had helped justify. The national system consolidated what had previously been a patchwork of force-by-force deployments, and the lessons learned from early operational platforms like BigFish shaped how that infrastructure was designed.
The design principles that drove BigFish — operational clarity, security, resilience, and the idea that ANPR data should be immediately searchable and actionable — did not disappear. They carried forward.
Written by the same people who built BigFish, ANPR-Live carries forward the same approach to security, resilience, and operational intelligence — updated for modern multi-tenant cloud deployment and a refined zone-and-group security model built over two decades of learning.