‘No single officer to blame’ for delay in finding Tia’s body

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has said the failure to find schoolgirl Tia Sharp’s body more quickly was not down to an individual officer.

Police teams searched the home of the 12-year-old’s grandmother in New Addington, south London, four times before her body was finally discovered in the loft on August 10, a week after she was first reported missing.

It is understood the body was wrapped in a bed sheet and bin bags when it was found.

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The force has apologised to Tia’s mother Natalie Sharp for the delay in finding her and put it down to “human error”.

Yesterday Bernard Hogan-Howe said: “If we thought it was an individual human error then that would explain it, but we’re carrying out a review because we’re not happy that explains it.

“We’re trying not to have a knee-jerk reaction. We need some time to understand what happened and what failed to happen.

“We want to learn lessons from this particular case. We have apologised and I repeat that apology today to Tia’s mum and family for not having found Tia’s body sooner.”

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An internal review is being carried out and Mr Hogan-Howe said he hopes to have some answers within “a few weeks” about what happened.

“We’ve explained that it was human error but we want to go into it more. You can always blame the individual but we want to understand what processes and management decisions we’ve made that led to that failure.

“That’s why we’re carrying out a review and we hope in a few weeks’ time we will have some conclusions from that, so that we make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Tia’s grandmother’s partner Stuart Hazell, 37, from New Addington, has been charged with her murder and is due to appear at the Old Bailey for a plea and case management hearing on November 19.

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A serious case review has also been launched into the death of the 12-year-old.

The inquiry, which is routine, is being conducted by the local authorities to examine the circumstances of any official involvement they had with the family.

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