More than 450 Lincolnshire Police cases collapsed due to lost, damaged or missing evidence, including a murder, stats reveal

A murder was one of 450-plus police prosecutions which collapsed due to lost, damaged or missing evidence in the county, it can be revealed.

Statistics made public today show that 2.44% of defendants passed on to the Crown Prosecution Service by Lincolnshire Police between October 2022 and September 2024 failed to be served justice for these reasons - the fifth highest proportion across the nation’s forces.

As well as a murder, there was also one sex offence case that collapsed.

In total, 11,735 defendants were handed to the CPS within this time frame, with 286 of their cases collapsing due to lost or missing evidence.

The information has been collated by the BBC Shared Data Unit, which also revealed that, over the past four years, some 30,000 prosecutions have collapsed across England and Wales for these reasons.

The figures include 70 murders and more than 550 sexual offences.

Missing, lost or damaged evidence refers to reported crimes that the police will investigate by collating evidence and presenting a case file to the CPS.

For more serious offences, the CPS will decide whether it has a prospect of conviction and whether it is in the public interest to do so.

But sometimes the case cannot proceed because key evidence is not available or missing. When this is the fault of the police force, it is recorded as an E72 in CPS data.

An E72 can comprise of a number of scenarios, such as: physical evidence - including forensic evidence - being lost, damaged or contaminated during the storage phase; digital evidence, such as victim interview footage or body camera footage, being lost during the storage phase; witness statements or pathology reports not being made available by police; key evidence not gathered from the crime scene.

“Police and the CPS work together to ensure evidence is gathered and presented in a timely manner, bringing offenders to justice and ensuring victims are safeguarded,” a spokesperson for the National Police Chiefs’ Council said.

“The E72 category refers to evidence that is either missing or unavailable when a defendant is going to trial following being charged.

“For example, police may not be able to find an expert witness to give evidence or it may be that a required medical statement cannot be obtained.

“When evidential issues occur in a case, the CPS will raise this with police for any action deemed necessary and we will work together to ensure these are resolved wherever possible.”

The forces with the highest proportion of missing evidence cases: 1 Metropolitan Police 4.6%, 2 City of London Police 3.2%, 3 Leicestershire Police 2.6%, 4 Staffordshire 2.5%, 5 Lincolnshire Police 2.44%.

Lincolnshire was one of 16 forces which saw at least one murder case dropped as a result of missing evidence between October 2022 and September 2024.

It had one case, while the Met topped the pile with 16 cases.

Lincolnshire Police has been approached for comment.