Overview

• More than 30,000 prosecutions in England and Wales collapsed between October 2022 and September 2024 due to missing or unavailable evidence, with the Metropolitan Police Service seeing failures in one in 20 cases compared with a one-in-50 national average.
• Cambridgeshire Constabulary recorded 170 case failures including seven sexual offences and no lost-murder prosecutions while Hampshire Police saw 465 collapses with 22 involving sexual crime charges.
• Experts attribute the rise in evidence-related case collapses to the 2012 closure of the Forensic Science Service, gaps in retention oversight, surging digital data volumes and police budget constraints.
• Support charities warn that each dropped sexual offence prosecution represents a devastating setback for survivors who came forward seeking justice.
• Police and the CPS are strengthening evidence-handling protocols and have opened a purpose-built forensic centre in Eastleigh to enhance storage and analysis standards.