Nicola Bulley: who is search diver Peter Faulding, why have SGI International been removed from NCA database?

A diving specialist who this month joined the search for missing mother Nicola Bulley has been removed from the National Crime Agency's (NCA) list of experts. Law enforcement sources confirmed to The Times that Peter Faulding's Specialist Group International (SGI) has been suspended while a review is conducted.

Faulding oversaw a group of specialists and divers using specialised sonar equipment in an effort to help LancashirePolice locate the missing dog walker earlier this month.

He and his private underwater rescue team offered their assistance in the search of the waterways of the Lancashire village of St. Michael’s on Wyre on 6 February, after a friend of Bulley said she had asked the team to rule out the theory that the mother-of-two fell into the river.

Despite extensive searches of the area, Bulley’s body was eventually found in the river more than three weeks after she first went missing, about a mile away from where she was last seen. Faulding said he was “baffled” after he failed to find her.

Neither his team or police divers found any trace of Bulley in the section of the river they searched over three days. Faulding said he had only cleared the area around the bench where her mobile phone was found, and that the tidal section beyond the weir was “an open book”, according to MailOnline. Here is everything you need to know about it.

What is Specialist Group International?

SGI’s team of experts and divers, based in Dorking, Surrey, has previously assisted police forces in the south of England. It offered its services to Lancashire Constabulary “free of charge”. Faulding said his team would use its high-tech sonar, which can see “every stick and stone lying on the riverbed”.

The team used the sonar equipment to send images from underwater to a screen on a search boat. After the first day of searching, Faulding said his team had scoured “three or four miles” of river until it got dark.

Specialist divers were on hand, but Faulding originally suggested they would only enter the water if a potential “target” was identified. The sonar equipment, thought to cost in the region of £52,000, will help the team to spot any objects of interest.

“If a person is lying on their side, it can look like something else,” explained Faulding at the time. “So, you have to check everything, and the beauty of this sonar allows us to actually measure the length of the target.”

Why has it been removed from the NCA’s list of experts?

Faulding was previously listed as a registered search expert in the NCA's Expert Advisers Database (EAD), which is used to find and source experts who can benefit law enforcement investigations. The list includes professionals with extensive knowledge in more than two dozen fields, ranging from toxicology to forensic artists.

A spokesperson for the NCA said the database is “subject to continual review”, and “its purpose is to maintain a list of expertise UK law enforcement can draw upon when required.” According to The Times, an internal investigation into what happened in the Bulley case is ongoing, and depending on the results, SGI may be reinstated on the list.

What did Faulding say during the search?

Speaking to reporters shortly after arriving in St Michael’s on Wyre on 6 February, Faulding said he was confident his team would find Bulley if she had fallen into the river. “We’ve got to be allowed to eliminate this river, so we can either confirm or deny what’s in here today,” he said.

He told Sky News: “If she’s not in the river, then obviously we won’t find anything but we’re going to work our hardest, we’ll probably be working under darkness... and that’s my intention to help the family.​”

After initial searches turned up no sign of Bulley, Faulding conceded that he did not think the missing mother was in the water. “That’s just my gut instinct at this point,” he told TalkTV ahead of SGI beginning its second day of searching on 7 February, “I personally don’t think she’s in the river.”

After his search turned up no results, Faulding told the media that the 45-year-old was not in the river and that her phone, which a dog walker found on a bench close to where she vanished, might have been a "decoy."

“If Nicola was in that river I would have found her – I guarantee you that – and she’s not in that section of the river,” he said on 8 February.

What has he said since Bulley was found?

More than three weeks after she first vanished and despite intensive searches, Bulley's body was eventually discovered in the river, just under a mile from where she was last seen. After failing to find her, Faulding said he was "baffled."

In the section of the river they searched over three days, neither his team nor police divers discovered any indication of Bulley. According to MailOnline, Faulding claimed that the tidal section beyond the weir was "an open book" and that he had only cleared the area around the bench where her mobile phone was found.

“All I can say is when we searched she was not on the bottom of that river,” he said. “We weren’t searching the reeds, our job was to search the water.”

On 20 February, appearing in a discussion with Isabel Webster and Eamonn Holmes on GB News, Faulding said “there’s always a fall guy and it looks like it’s me, but I’m not accepting it” before hitting out at ‘trolls’ on social media.

“I want to say again, the police have searched that area along the banks for three weeks thoroughly with divers, using side-scan sonar, and us - and you know there’s always a fall guy and it looks like it’s me, but I’m not accepting it.

“We’ve got the sonar imagery of the river bed…we did the best with our ability, but it was not our remit to search the reeds at all. That was the land search teams.”