Of the 170,000 people who go missing in the UK each year, some cases remain etched in our minds, while others fade quickly from public attention. It’s as if they were never known at all.

Their absence continues to cast a long shadow over their families and friends, leaving them with unanswered questions and enduring pain. For each missing person, there are unanswered questions which continue to torment the minds of those who loved and miss them.

The Missing Persons charity currently has 21 people from the East Midlands on their long-term missing persons list and still hope they can be found.

Their families also still remain dedicated to finding them despite their lives being irrevocably altered by these disappearances.

To help keep them at the forefront of our minds, we’ll be highlighting some of the cases and making appeals for information about their wearabouts in the hope someone out there knows something about their current circumstances or maybe they’ve been spotted in a neighbourhood or during a shopping trip to town.

Anyone who has information or potential sightings on the whereabouts of the individuals is encouraged to contact the Missing People charity. You can call or text them for free on 116000, and their website is available here.

Tim Beardsley

It’s almost 14 years since Tim Beardsley went missing from his Chesterfield home on July 9, 2012 – and although there has been unconfirmed sightings across the UK and abroad, his family has not heard from him since.

Mr Beardsley was 44 when he left his home in Old Tupton at around 8.30am that morning and failed to show up at work.

He had made an appointment with the doctor on the day he vanished as part of his ongoing treatment for depression, which was first diagnosed in 2006.

Tim had been diagnosed with depression back in 2002 and this treatment had been ongoing. He had actually booked an appointment with the doctor on the day it went missing, but never showed up to his appointment.

His wife Terrie Beardsley heard him leave the property and instantly knew something was wrong.

Back in 2014 she spoke to a Channel 4 documentary about the disaapearence. recounting the morning he disappeared

“The last time I saw Tim, he was laid in bed and I thought he was asleep,” she said.

“I just sort of got out of bed and went into the bathroom. I was actually getting out the bath, and I hadn’t even heard him get dressed or anything. So he must have literally just got out of bed, put his clothes on, straight downstairs, took the alarm off, and then the next thing I heard was the car starting up.

“At that point, then I knew something was wrong, because there was no need for him to be going anywhere at all at that time. So I dashed downstairs, and as I got to the front door, I then realised that he was halfway up the road.

“He hadn’t said a word. He’d just sneaked out while I was in the bathroom. So I knew at that point, straight away that something was wrong.

“My heart was just like. I didn’t know what to think. I just knew it was really bad. I just knew that This shouldn’t have happened. And what do I do now?

Tim left his watch and a mobile phone behind at the house that morning and took no money.

The car he left in, a green Ford Focus estate, was found five days later 150 miles away in the Lake District on the A592 between Pooley Bride and Glenridding. Tim and his wife had enjoyed a picnic at the spot his car was found a few years earlier.

The vehicle was first spotted on the Friday morning by Dave Watkinson from Patterdale Mountain Rescue, who was on his way to work.

“On July 13, I was just driving down to work and spotted a green Ford Focus in one of the laybys” he told a documentary.

“I had a quick look in the surrounding areas, and I couldn’t see any people being out for a fish or for a kayak or a bike ride. Something didn’t quite tally up here with this car so I called it in. It was then that we kind of went, well it must be a missing persons car.”

The police then visited Terrie.

“We had a visit from a police sergeant.” she explained in the film.

“I was sort of feeling sort of very tense as he got there. And the tenseness, I think, then developed into shivers. To be honest, I could feel from his aura that he thought something had happened to Tim. And just the way he was, he was very, very serious, and he said they had have found Tim’s car in the Lake District, and the car was parked next to a lake

“I think perhaps he thought that the worst had happened and Tim was in the lake. But I was 101% convinced that he hadn’t done anything like that – quite sure.”

Since then Police have made a number of appeals and chased down several potential sightings, including a promising one in Birmingham that eventually turned out not to be him.

The search continues.

Although he didn’t take a passport with him, there has been a possible sighting in Malaga, Spain.

Tim’s friend Mark Brailsford said it was a possibility that Tim didn’t want to be found.

“Who knows? Tim’s a clever lad.

“Whatever he’s done, he always researches it to the higher level than most people. So if he’s chosen that option, then he’ll have really worked it out, which maybe that’s why we’re struggling to find him.”