The Metropolitan police have asked the Home Office for more funding to continue the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.



More than £11m has been spent on the operation to find the girl since she vanished, aged 3, from an apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, while on holiday with her family in May 2007.

Funding for Operation Grange, which was formed at the request of David Cameron’s government in 2011 after a plea from Madeleine’s parents, is regularly reviewed, last receiving a £154,000 extension in September 2017.



A team of four Met police detectives continue to investigate Madeleine’s disappearance, receiving special funding from the Home Office.

In a statement, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The Home Office has provided funding to the Metropolitan police for Operation Grange and the resources required are reviewed regularly with careful consideration given before any new funding is allocated.”

In May last year, on the 10th anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance, police said over 600 individuals had been investigated and 40,000 documents reviewed in relation to the case. Four people were identified as suspects in 2013 and interviewed by Portuguese and English officers in Faro, but no further action was taken.

The number of officers on Operation Grange was reduced from 29 to four in October 2015.



Kate and Gerry McCann, Madeleine’s parents, have said they will never give up home of finding their daughter.

“Right now we are committed to taking the current inquiry as far as we possibly can and we are confident that will happen. Ultimately this, and the previous work, gives all of us the very best chance of getting the answers – although we must, of course, remember that no investigation can guarantee to provide a definitive conclusion,” the Met police said last year.