When a person goes missing the first thought is with supporting their family and doing everything possible to get them home safely.

But in these austere times, stretched police resources mean officers are struggling to cope with the amount of people who go missing.

Southend’s police chief has warned hospital staff, firefighters and other agencies will be needed to help tackle the rise in the number of people who need to be looked for.

Each day the 40-strong team deal with more than three missing people – or 25 a week – which will normally take up the time of three or four officers if the person is deemed as “medium risk”.

However, if the missing person is thought to be “high risk”, even more officers are tasked with tracking them down – often amounting to more than 10 per cent of the team’s resources.

Chief Insp Anslow said his team will need to rely more and more on the help of firefighters, mental health charities and staff at hospitals.

He intends to talk through tactics with the different agencies in the coming months to help them all work together to get missing people back home.

He said: “If we have a high risk person that will attract a high number of resources very quickly with the duty inspector taking a hands-on role running the case and the senior inspector having an input.

“That will typically look like three or four vehicles deployed immediately to the search area and the helicopter being requested.

“There will be specialist search officers, volunteers assisting and there is a large media contingent.

“Southend has more than the rest of the force’s areas of this type of incident. It’s the biggest town so we have more people living here.

“It’s a seaside town and seaside towns tend to experience – particularly through the summer months – missing people incidents relating to children.

“On a typical Saturday afternoon in the middle of summer, you can easily have four or five missing children. Mercifully we find them quite quickly.”

The worry for officers, and other agencies, is getting vulnerable people to safety quickly.

Mr Anslowadded: “I am talking anecdotally but probably 98 to 99 per cent of our missing people do not present a threat to anyone else, so it’s not a crime, and we don’t think they are about to commit a crime.

“The majority of people that go missing have something to suggest that they may cause themselves harm, such as people who walk out of A&E without being assessed or people who have voiced suicidal thoughts.

“We liaise very closely with other emergency services and at a force level I know that there have been discussions with the fire service about how we can work together most effectively.

“I believe the fire service could certainly help us with searches whenever they have free time between fire calls and their training sessions.

“It is only a suggestion at the moment but it certainly is something we might want to consider, as this is about saving lives, not investigating crime.

“In the same way we are now looking more deeply into where our demands come from and when our analysis is complete will be talking to local health administrators to see how we can prevent people becoming missing persons in the first place.”

He suggested staff at hospitals could help intervene or keep an eye on vulnerable people to stop them from leaving.

Once missing people are found, police officers also have to stay with them until help can be organised.

Mr Anslow said: “That can take hours and those officers aren’t being deployed to the next incident.”