Police response to welfare concerns of woman - Metropolitan Police Service, June 2022

In June 2022, Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) officers attended a concern for welfare of a woman at a flat in south London. The woman would not engage with officers and they concluded this was because of her partner being present. 

No offences were reported, and the officers left. Six days later the woman’s partner called police concerned for her welfare as he had not heard from her. Officers attended, gained entry to the flat but were unable to locate her. 

Two days later her partner called police again wishing to report the woman as missing. Officers attended and again forced entry to the flat but did not locate the woman. The decision was made not to take a report of a missing person. The woman was later located dead in a river.

We conducted an investigation and asked the police officers, who made the decision to not treat the woman as a missing person and not carry out safeguarding checks on her, for their rationale and justification.

Our investigation concluded in December 2022 but we waited for the inquest to conclude before publishing our findings. 

The investigation concluded there was no indication any police officer may have behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings or committed a criminal offence.

We carefully considered whether there were any learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents. In this case, the investigation has not identified any learning.