Missing persons (FOI ref: 562/26)

Request

Can you please provide me with the Annual Statistics for reported missing persons cases from 2015-2025. I am seeking to understand how many were reported in each year. Secondly, can you please provide me with statistics of how many in the same period from 2015-2025 were finalised and how many remained opened and unsolved.

Response

Between 01/01/2015 and 31/12/2025, there were 135,645 reports in total. The breakdown per year is in the table below:

38 missing people investigations from this time period remain open.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request may be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of data which has relevance to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.