A teenager dedicated to finding the UK’s missing people, joining the search for Nicola Bulley and putting up free posters, has now set his sights on improving police standards.
Ben Thornbury, 19, from Malmesbury, Wiltshire, established the ‘Missing People – Lost and Loved’ Facebook group in February 2023 after finding there were a spate of disappearances in his area who were “mostly teenagers”.
Over the years, Ben has worked with local billboard companies to highlight his missing person posters, once paying £500 out of his own pocket for a campaign in Bristol.
Ben, who currently works part-time at a Co-op supermarket and is an avid community worker, organising litter-picking groups and campaigning for pothole repairs in his area, also dedicates his time to scrolling through missing person Facebook groups every day, creating free missing posters and providing advice to concerned relatives.
His work has taken him to the heart of several high-profile missing person cases, and in 2023 he established a key Facebook group with around 30,000 members of those searching for missing mother Ms Bulley, who disappeared while walking her dog in Lancashire.
More recently, Ben created the missing posters for Joseph Bellamy, an 18-year-old who went missing in South Wales in December 2024 – with police finding his body on March 9.
Ben is now petitioning on Change.org for police forces across the country to review their handling of missing person cases with the aim of helping more families obtain answers – and he hopes to take his campaign to Downing Street to “really push for some change”.
“The support is out there for people who have a missing loved one, whether it’s our group or another, we can get the message out there,” Ben told PA Real Life.
“We’ll do our absolute best to reunite a lot more people across the UK and continue to create awareness.”
Around 170,000 people are reported missing to the police every year in the UK, according to the National Crime Agency’s Missing Persons Unit.
Ben started looking into missing person cases two years ago.
“I saw a lot of people going missing locally and they were mostly teenagers,” he said. “People needed posters creating and I had the expertise through college to make them – it was greatly appreciated.”
Seeing a demand for his services, Ben established a Facebook group titled Missing People – Lost and Loved on February 22, 2023.
There, he creates and circulates posters for missing people along with details of their description, where they were last seen and who to contact if they are spotted.
“I’m always on my phone scrolling through social media so I go through different missing people Facebook groups, pick out posts and reach out to the families,” Ben explained.
“I ask them for their police reference number, just as there are some fake posts nowadays so you have to be careful, and then I let the families know we can offer some advice and a free poster.
“They provide a photo, I add all the details and then I put it onto our website and our Facebook group.”
He will also send the poster to the families so they can distribute it online or print it out.
Ben’s Facebook group now has more than 5,000 members and he also works collaboratively with other founders of various missing person groups on the platform.
“We’re all working to reunite people, we all do the same thing, we all help each other out,” he said.
With his work, Ben has been involved with several high-profile missing person cases.
He set up a key Facebook group to provide an online space for those searching for Ms Bulley, who went missing while walking her dog in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, before her body was located in February 2023.
“(The group) was one of the main ones during the case, it nearly had 30,000 members at the time,” he said. “It helped to get people together and they organised searches on there.”
More recently, Ben helped to create the missing posters for Mr Bellamy. His body was found and formally identified on March 9, Gwent Police said.
“It’s sad to see and it was a big case,” Ben said.
“I feel for the family, I really do.”
While many cases do not have a positive resolution, Ben said it is “fantastic” when missing people are found.
“A woman’s grandson went missing for around a week, and because of the publicity we got and the posters, he was found,” he said.
Over the years, Ben has worked with local billboard companies to highlight his missing person posters.
“We also did one in London with a boy about a year ago and he was found,” he added.
Ben launched a petition in January this year to call on police forces around the country to review their handling of missing person cases, receiving more than 20,000 signatures so far.
“I’ve been talking to families for over two years and one thing that comes up is police forces are not giving enough support, and it comes up far too often,” he said.
“Some families just feel left without answers, they feel hopeless.”
Ben added he has also noticed families complaining of a “lack of communication” between different police forces if their missing loved one travels between two jurisdictions, as well as a delay in the release of CCTV footage showing where someone was last seen.
“I’m willing to really push for some change,” he said.
“I need to grow it up a bit more, get my MP involved and start pushing it to the people responsible.”
In future, Ben hopes to meet more families in person and establish a registered charity with his work around missing people.
“I do a lot of stuff over the internet, texts, messages, emails, but I really need to get out there now and start directly talking to families,” he said.
Deputy Chief Constable Catherine Hankinson, national policing lead for missing people, said: “Police forces investigate hundreds of missing persons reports every day, working around the clock to protect people from harm.
“Police are trained to assess risk and search for missing people, reviewing individual circumstances to assess why someone is missing and whether they are at risk of serious harm in any form.
“We understand how traumatic it can be for families when a person goes missing, but the police must balance their duties to safeguard vulnerable people against a person’s right to privacy if they choose to leave their home and go missing.
“We accept that there will always be room for improvement in investigations, which is why the national Missing People Policing Group works to improve the police and partnership response to missing people.”
To find out more, visit Ben’s petition here.