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Thousands of criminal cases collapsing due to missing or lost police evidence

Sima Kotecha
Senior UK correspondent
Paul Lynch
Shared data unit
BBC Rows of boxes are stored on shelving at the National Forensics Archive BBC
The National Forensics Archive houses millions of exhibits from criminal cases prior to 2012

Thousands of criminal cases - including some of the most serious violent and sexual offences - are collapsing every year because of lost, damaged or missing evidence, the BBC has found.

More than 30,000 prosecutions in England and Wales collapsed between October 2020 and September 2024, data from the Crown Prosecution Service (S) reveals.

They include 70 homicides and more than 550 sexual offences.

Police chiefs say not all the cases relate to lost evidence and the figures include situations where officers may not be able to find an expert witness or get a medical statement.

However, it follows a series of damning reports about how police forces are storing evidence.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We always expect forces to adhere to the National Police Chiefs' Council's (NPCC) guidance on storage and retention of evidence."

A leading criminologist says the increase was largely "a resourcing issue" brought about by cuts to police forces throughout the 2010s.

And ex-police officers told the BBC it was unsurprising and the amount of evidence they deal with is "overwhelming".

When police forces build cases around defendants they hand a file to the S.

But when the S cannot proceed to trial because police do not have the necessary evidence needed to secure a conviction - they record it in their data as an "E72".

The BBC, alongside the University of Leicester, managed to obtain Freedom of Information (FOI) requests showing the number of E72s recorded between 2020 and 2024 at police forces in England and Wales.

They can include:

  • Physical evidence - including forensic evidence - being lost, damaged or contaminated during storage
  • Digital evidence, such as victim interview footage or body camera footage, being lost
  • Witness statements or pathology reports not being made available by police
  • Key evidence not gathered from the crime scene

The figures obtained by the BBC do not break down why cases have collapsed.

However, the data does suggest the number of cases recorded as an E72 are increasing, with a higher proportion of prosecutions failing to result in a conviction because of lost or missing evidence each year.

In 2020, a total of 7,484 prosecutions collapsed because of lost, missing or damaged evidence. In 2024, that had risen by 9%, to 8,180.

'It can really affect someone's mental state'

Kiera, dressed in a black hooded top, can be seen looking at the camera. She is seated and a garden can be seen in the window behind her.
Kiera, 19, had to wait nearly 10 years for the people who sexually abused her to see justice after Lancashire Police lost crucial interview recordings

When Kiera was just nine years old she gave an interview on camera to Lancashire Police describing the harrowing details of the sexual abuse she had been subjected to over several years.

But a few months later, she says, police officers told her mother they had lost the recording.

"It was really hard, because I sat there for hours and hours telling people what had happened to me and for that to be lost, I just thought like what's the point in doing it again":[]}