Unidentified Remains
Your request details
Request for Information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 I am writing to requestinformation concerning unidentified bodies or remains within the jurisdiction of South Yorkshirepolice over the past five years, and the current status. Please provide the following information:
1. How many unidentified bodies or sets of human remains have been discovered in SouthYorkshire from 2020 until now for which identity has not been established.
1a. Of those, how many remain unidentified as of the date of this request. I understand that according to the National Crime Agency or Missing Persons databases there is currently just one unidentified body dating from 1994.
2. Is this number correct or have you added to them in the years since 1994?
3. Whether there are any future plans to try to find out who these missing people might be. If parts of this information are not held by South Yorkshire Police, please indicate whether they areheld by another body (for example, Sheffield Coroners Service, Sheffield city council, Doncastercity council or Barnsley council.
Response
I sourced your request to our Major Crimes Team who have supplied the following information.
Question 1
1
Question 1a
1
Question 2
No Information Held - This type of data may be held by the coroner.
Question 3
You may not be aware that Section 8 of the Freedom of Information Act concerns recorded information a public authority may hold. This question appears to be seeking general comment, explanation and opinion which is not covered by the legislation. As such, this is not a valid question which I am in a position to be able to respond to under the FOI Act.
Please note, every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that data has been extracted from data sources used by this force for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording systems and information assets.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures/data for any requests may have limitations, and this should betaken into account when those data sets are used.
Police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.