Frontline police spend more time searching for missing people than fighting crime, a senior officer has revealed.

Officers in some forces estimate up to 30 per cent of each shift is consumed by missing persons inquiries – while just 5 per cent goes on investigating burglaries, thefts and other incidents.

Chief Inspector Alan Rhees-Cooper, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said time spent seeking missing persons varied from force to force, but was ‘significant’ across the country.

‘Response officers are spending more time looking for missing people than they are spending on investigating crime,’ he added.

Mr Rhees-Cooper, chairman of the NPCC’s missing people policing group, carried out a ‘peer review’ in one force where response officers said they were ‘spending between 25 and 30 per cent of their tours of duty looking for missing people and spending less than 5 per cent investigating crime’.

He said: ‘That impacts frontline officers who are attending incidents, who are also attending your burglaries, robbery reports, domestic abuse reports, et cetera.’

Figures from the UK Missing Persons Unit show forces conducted 319,745 investigations in England and Wales in 2022-23 – or 876 a day.

Mr Rhees-Cooper, who has worked full-time for the past five years on developing national strategies on missing people, outlined two projects aiming to cut the number of reports. 

‘We often get reports from health and care settings about patients who go missing from hospital,’ he said.

‘A lot of these individuals aren’t really missing people. Many of them go home – and if you go home you’re not a missing person. 

‘The question is which agency should attend the home address to make sure they’re okay and to try to persuade them to go back for treatment.’

Second, many reports involve children who go missing from care homes or foster families.

Mr Rhees-Cooper said: ‘Sometimes those children were not missing, they were just late home or simply testing the boundaries.

‘We have piloted a new framework to ensure the police only get involved when a child is at risk of suffering significant harm or is being exploited.’

Another area involves people who have simply decided to disappear, Mr Rhees-Cooper said.

‘Adults are entitled to leave their families and start a new life elsewhere without the police trying to trace them,’ he added. 

‘If I decided to leave my wife tomorrow and go and start a new life, it would actually be a breach of my human rights if the police start actively tracing me, particularly if they put publicity in the Press.

‘We’re not a tracing agency. We’re not there to find people who decide to leave home.’

Police should become involved only if a person is at risk, he added.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘Labour have no idea how to keep the public safe and bring down crime across this country. They have practically given up on law and order.’