Missing persons investigations going back decades and cases of unidentified remains across the UK will be freshly investigated under a new pilot scheme.

The programme, by the charity Locate International, will be limited initially to a small number of police forces. But the National Police Chiefs Council has said it could be extended nationwide, bringing in volunteer detectives from around the world to reinvestigate all 13,000 cold cases on the National Crime Agency’s UK missing persons unit.

“There is currently no dedicated, specialist service for families to turn to when a case remains unsolved or is not being progressed satisfactorily,” said Dave Grimstead, the retired police officer who founded the charity.

“Research shows that those left behind, without help or hope, will often engage on lifelong and traumatic searches.”

Locate International has been running a small, below-the-radar pilot scheme since 2019 with police forces in Devon and Cornwall, Norfolk and Hampshire. They are now looking to extend the number of police forces they work with.

Last year, the charity’s team of volunteers investigated 128 cases of missing persons and unidentified remains, identifying 26 people – one in five.

The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) is considering a national pilot scheme across all police forces. The programme would include live and cold cases, with forces sharing their internal files with Locate International’s vetted volunteers.

“We support the development of innovative projects where third-sector organisations and police forces work together to safeguard vulnerable people,” said the NPCC lead for missing persons, deputy chief constable Catherine Hankinson. “I am aware that Locate International has already worked with some forces and look forward to working together in the future to support missing people and their families.”

Locate International volunteers are already embedded across the Devon and Cornwall police force. DCI Mark Beavan, from Devon and Cornwall police, said he was keen to expand the scheme even further by bringing in Locate International professional experts from universities to work with his force on forensic investigations.

“When I first met Dave, I almost bit his hand off when I realised the expertise and resources that his organisation offered both our dynamic and our unsolved missing investigations,” said Beavan. “We simply don’t have the time, money or spare capacity to devote ourselves to inquiries that haven’t been given the highest risk rating.”

Beavan introduced a role of missing persons volunteer into his force so the charity’s investigators could have access to police files. “Using Locate International volunteers has become ‘business as usual’ for us now,” he said. “They are able to get information that we struggle with because we only have a few digital media investigators and those investigators have to prioritise high-risk cases, which often aren’t those of missing person or unidentified remains.”

Under the pilot scheme, families from across the UK will be also able to contact Locate International directly to ask them for help locating their missing loved ones.

“The goal will always be to go back and review every case from the start with the family instead of assuming that everything in the police’s case files is correct or complete,” said Grimstead.

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But the charity’s findings will only be given to the police. “Our only role, when someone is located, is to ensure the police have the information,” said Grimstead. “We will not contact them or tell the families what we have uncovered. The police can then follow up directly with that person. They will not force someone who has chosen to disappear to return but they can assess and find help if it is needed.”

Police forces in England have admitted that investigations into missing persons have been hampered by decades of cuts to budgets, rising demand and lack of training.

Researchers found that police missing persons units suffered uniquely acute levels of low morale, too few staff and poor-quality investigations.

A fifth of the police officers they polled at missing persons units said they had received no relevant training. Others reported being assigned more than 30 missing person cases a week.

“Even if the police service only spends one day a year reviewing each case, that’s still 13,000 days a year taken away from live cases of murder, rape, terrorism and domestic violence,” said Grimstead. “That’s hard to justify when many of these missing person cases won’t have a connection to any crime at all.”

Although, he added, “without locating the person who is missing we may never know if they have been a victim and suffered significant harm, being exploited or in need of physical or psychological medical help”.