Lancashire Police are set to conduct an internal review into the Nicola Bulley investigation, the force has confirmed. It comes as the force is under fire after sharing details of the missing mother-of-two's struggles with alcohol and the menopause.
In a statement, a spokeswoman said: “A review of the investigation is diarised and will be conducted by our Head of Crime Detective Chief Superintendent Pauline Stables. She is also PIP 4 accredited and has attended the national reviewer course.”
Mortgage adviser Ms Bulley vanished while walking her springer spaniel Willow in the village of St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, on January 27 after dropping her two daughters at school.
Her phone, still connected to a work call for her job as a mortgage adviser, was found just over 20 minutes later on a bench overlooking the riverbank, with her dog running loose. She has not been seen for three weeks.
Lancashire Police have come under heavy criticism for revealing the details about her “vulnerabilities” in the weeks before her disappearance that they say made her “high risk”. They later added in a statement that she had been struggling with alcohol issues and the menopause, and had stopped taking HRT medication.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it was assessing the information to determine whether an investigation would be necessary over the contact officers had with Ms Bulley on January 10. The referral comes after her family called for an end to the “speculation and rumours” about her private life.
The Home Office also said it was receiving regular updates from the force about its handling of the case – including “why personal details about Nicola were briefed out at this stage of the investigation”.
Dame Vera Baird said she believed Lancashire Constabulary had made a “dreadful error” in disclosing the missing mother-of-two’s vulnerabilities. She also said she is worried it will stop people making complaints in the future and wondered if such details would have been released if she was a man.
Dame Vera told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m afraid this is the biggest error that I have seen for quite a long time. It’s going to just, you know, very sadly, to undermine trust in the police yet further.
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“I’m sure they would have explained themselves if they had an explanation… if it was relevant, it needed to be in a public domain at the start and it wasn’t. I mean, that is a really worrying error. It is frankly dreadful. I’m worried about future people making complaints.
“If one of your relatives has gone missing… and may have some weaknesses, as goodness knows we all do, then would you, first of all, go to the police at all as early as you should when you will have to tell them all the intimate details to help them with their inquiry – that’s essential.
“But would you if it’s going to be on the front page of The Sun the next day or a week later? And if you do, will you tell them these details?”
Sir Keir Starmer has said he was “very surprised to see what the police had put out there” when they released information about missing Nicola Bulley’s struggles with alcohol and the menopause.
In an interview with Times Radio, the Labour leader said: “I was very surprised to see what the police had put out there. I was not sure why that degree of personal information was necessary.
“I think I read that they had spoken to the family about it, but I was very surprised. If there is, in the fullness of time, a good justification then so be it but I think most people would be very uncomfortable. I certainly felt uncomfortable with that private information being put in the public domain.”
On February 3, the force told the public of its main hypothesis that Ms Bulley had fallen into the River Wyre in a “10-minute window” between 9.10am and 9.20am on the day she disappeared. The search for her has since been extended to the sea but she has not been found.
