More than 100 Palantir staff have access to NHS systems

A new freedom of information request submitted by Aria, a non-profit research organisation, has revealed that 145 Palantir staff have been given access to NHS systems, exposing the true scale of the tech giant’s creeping takeover. 

This news builds on previous revelations in April 2026, which raised alarms over Palantir staff being quietly handed NHS email accounts, and in May, which confirmed these corporate contractors can access patient data environments.

Now, the full extent of this corporate infiltration has been laid bare. The official figures released by NHS England confirm that, as of May 28 2026, a total of 145 contractors from Palantir UK and an additional 87 third-party sub-contractors have been formally onboarded to the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) programme. To facilitate this, all these private operatives have been issued approved @nhs.net email accounts to conduct their work under the instruction of the NHS. 

There are serious concerns with the web of privacy, security, and systemic risks stemming from Palantir’s deep integration into our health service. NHS workers are concerned that @nhs.net email accounts allowed corporate contractors to masquerade as public health workers, gaining access to internal files and directories containing personal data for up to 1.5 million NHS employees.

Compounding this, The Register exposed Palantir contractors being granted broad “admin” roles, giving them uninhibited access to raw, identifiable patient data before it is anonymised.

What makes this corporate invasion even more infuriating is that the technology we are handing our health service over to is fundamentally broken. A recent Democracy for Sale investigation revealed that Palantir’s £330m software is “slow and clunky”, prone to frequent crashes, and deeply unpopular with the frontline staff forced to use it. Data analysts have branded the system “absolutely rubbish”, with reports of users waiting 20 minutes for a dashboard to load, only for it to crash. 

Worse still, it’s barely being used at all: despite claims of widespread rollout, figures show that 52 trusts haven’t used a single FDP app in a year, and the “groundbreaking” Cancer 360 app is being used by just six trusts.

This isn’t just a multi-million-pound tech failure. This is a profound threat to our public health service. The government cannot allow our NHS to be permanently locked into a failing system that treats patient trust as a commodity.

We’re calling on the government to listen to parliamentary committees, NHS workers and the public, and enact the contract’s break clause to kick Palantir out of our health service once and for all.