General Election 2024 Manifesto

There are currently 11,600 people who have been recorded as missing for more than one year and 973 unidentified people in the UK.

There are many complex reasons why people go missing and in order to tackle these issues, it is essential that there is intervention and engagement across government departments with a long-term plan that is not dictated by electoral cycles.

The police service continues to be stretched by increased demands and budget constraints, and the volume of long-term missing and unidentified people increases every year, further compounding capacity within police forces to review cold cases.

Locate International has developed one of the largest community volunteer training programmes in Europe that is dedicated to combining technical knowledge and practical skills in cold case investigations and we are therefore uniquely placed to partner with police forces across the country.

During 2023, our volunteers provided 120,000 hours of operational support. The equivalent cost based on a national living wage is over £1.37 million and delivered at no cost to police or families.

We believe that every family of a long-term missing or unidentified person should know that all that could be done, has been done.

The missing and unidentified do not have a voice. They cannot cast their vote on 4th July. It is therefore our role to be their voice during this General Election campaign, and we have four key asks for the incoming Government that we believe will have a huge impact on the work we do here at Locate International.

Our Manifesto Asks

1. The formation of a new cross-departmental task force led by Locate International and involving families of the missing, to implement a comprehensive system designed to investigate and explain the facts of long term missing persons cases.

2. Ringfenced funding for the independent review of all cases of missing and unidentified people that are more than a year old.

3. Nationwide implementation of QUEST, our pioneering analytical and investigative system, working in partnership with police forces across the country.

4. Proactive and regular dialogue between Government, police forces and charities such as Locate International to improve information sharing, reduce duplication of efforts and increase the chances of solving cases.

Our Impact

“For a family in our position Locate International have formed a very important role in the search for our missing son. They act as a bridge with the police, who without the production of new evidence, are not in a position to pursue the case any further. The expertise that Locate have with access to, such as forensic linguistics experts, who look at handwritten evidence together with computer and phone data, is a completely different area that has given us refreshed hope in the search for our missing son”.

Julie & Rob Stammers, parents of Anthony Stammers who has been missing since 2012.