Recommendation - Staffordshire Police, December 2025
We identified organisational learning following an independent investigation in which a child was reported missing.
IOPC reference
Recommendations
The IOPC recommends that Staffordshire Police amend their Missing Persons Procedure to ensure that the Force Control Centre (FCC) pro-actively notifies the Local Operations Inspector (LOI) whenever a new missing person is recorded on the COMPACT system (a missing persons’ case management system used by Staffordshire Police and some other forces). The procedure should outline what constitutes an effective and proactive notification and how any communication should be recorded on the relevant logs or systems.
This follows an independent IOPC investigation in which a child was reported missing. The investigation found that the LOI on duty was not actively informed by the FCC that the child had been recorded as a missing person. As a result, the LOI took no action throughout their shift, as they were not aware of the case. While the FCC Sergeant ‘tagged’ and passed on ownership of the case, they took no further action to actively notify the relevant LOI.
Staffordshire Police’s Missing Persons Procedure states that on medium and high-risk cases, the FCC Sergeant is responsible for ensuring that the investigation is ‘handed over to the LOI’ and that this is ‘documented.’ It does not state how this handover is to occur nor a timescale for completing it.
The COMPACT system used to record the case currently requires a manual refresh for new missing persons cases to appear, hence why it is important that when a case is ‘tagged’ or assigned to a new officer, they are proactively made aware.
Accepted
Staffordshire Police missing persons policy amendment has been completed to address this issue.
Page 7 of the refreshed Missing Policy (Oct 2025) states:
“On the creation of ALL missing persons on COMPACT, Force Incident Managers should pass this onto the Local Operations Inspector and/or Sergeant for the local policing area as soon as possible; this is to ensure prompt response and ownership, it also allows us to progress further investigative lines of enquiry, it should be recorded who they have handed this on to, on the STORM serial on every occasion prior to closure”.
This element of the policy amendment has been implemented in force.