Justice CommitteeWritten evidence from Judy Lancaster
1. Background
My Son, Chay Lancaster age 41, went missing from home on Sunday 12 September 2010. He regularly went walking in the Lake District in Cumbria at weekends. CCTV evidence shows him arriving that day by train: there is no evidence to suggest he returned. Chay lived alone in a mortgaged house: he was divorced 14 years ago: he had three daughters from the marriage who he was very close to and are his sole beneficiaries.
2. Does the current system work effectively?
2.1 From my experience I am not sure what the current system is. In order to deal with day to day personal and financial issues I had to trawl the internet to find information. This was very time consuming and confusing. In our case it was over a week before the family were aware that Chay was missing. It transpired he had not reported for work or telephoned to explain his absence. His Manager said this was very unusual as he always applied for leave of absence and made arrangements for his work to be covered (Chay worked with adults with learning difficulties and understood his duty of care towards them in his absence).
2.2 When someone goes missing the first port of call for help is the police. Whilst they ask the right questions to establish whether there were personal problems which suggested my son went missing deliberately I found that they were not equipped to help when it came to questions of a practical nature. An area of significant improvement would be for the Police to have a professional person in place who is capable of giving sound advice and practical help to relatives to ease the frustration. A simple leaflet could be prepared stating where to find help and what needs to be done.
3. Does the current system create difficulties for families?
3.1 In the initial stages of Chay’s disappearance I was at a loss on how to start handling his financial affairs. It was imperative his house be protected from repossession. I found financial institutions extremely difficult to deal with as they appeared to have no experience of dealing with these cases. We were fortunate that Chay’s bank account was in credit and most expenditure was paid by direct debit, however, when trying to stop some of the payments which were no longer relevant I was unable to do so. His bank have not responded to all correspondence and trying to make contact by phone is expensive and my experience is that it leads to being connected to a person who has no experience in this area. Financial institutions should have guidelines on how to handle a Missing persons affairs and provide practical help to resolve issues that arise in this situation.
4. Presumption of Death
4.1 I have found this very difficult to approach and as a consequence have not taken any action in this respect. From the beginning I have accepted that Chay met with a tragic accident but unless his body is found we may need to go down this route as waiting seven years is not an alternative. I will shortly be looking at taking legal advice and accept that I will have to pay for this. We now need closure and to be able to bring his affairs to a conclusion. My Grand Daughters are entitled to their rightful inheritance, albeit small, and it is what their father would have wanted. I would welcome changes to the current situation to enable a quick and straightforward procedure to be put into operation as quickly as possible.
September 2011