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Missing person coordinator

Major investigation and public protection — Authorised Professional Practice

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Summary

The role of a missing person coordinator is crucial for ensuring effective responses to missing person cases. This role involves problem-solving and encompasses safeguarding priorities, information sharing to assess risk, and engaging in multi-agency collaborations. The coordinator’s responsibilities include establishing multi-agency protocols, overseeing cases independently, escalating critical safety information, and recognizing patterns such as repeat individuals or addresses to support a coordinated response from all partner agencies. This ensures that investigations are intelligence-led and that preventative measures are implemented where appropriate.

Key principles

  • 1Identification of safeguarding priorities
  • 2Collating and sharing information for risk assessment
  • 3Establishing and maintaining multi-agency partnerships
  • 4Promoting multi-agency protocols
  • 5Assisting in independent case oversight
  • 6Escalating critical safety information
  • 7Recognizing trends and repeat cases for coordinated responses

This is a brief, factual summary. The full APP guidance — including operational detail, statutory references and case studies — lives on the College of Policing website. APP is the authoritative source for UK policing practice.

Read the full APP guidance

Source: College of Policing — Authorised Professional Practice · Crown copyright, licensed under Open Government Licence v3.0. Summary fetched 2026-06-27.