The total cost of the investigation into the disappearance of RAF serviceman Corrie McKeague has topped £2.1million, it has been revealed.

East Anglian Daily Times: Corrie McKeague in a picture uploaded by his mother. Picture: CONTRIBUTEDCorrie McKeague in a picture uploaded by his mother. Picture: CONTRIBUTED (Image: Archant)

According to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, as of January 11, the far-reaching investigation to find the gunner, who went missing after a night out in Bury St Edmunds in September 2016, has cost £1,325,000 plus officer salary costs of £826,000.

The statistics, obtained by the BBC, also revealed officers spent 34,000 hours on the investigation, which does not including police staff or overtime hours.

The total number of overtime hours worked on the case is more than 5,600 hours – amounting to overtime payments of £235,000, excluding claims made in December.

Suffolk’s police and crime commissioner Tim Passmore asked the government to cover the cost of the investigation following the conclusion of the second search at a landfill search in Milton, Cambridgeshire.

East Anglian Daily Times: Corrie McKeague's mother Nicola Urquhart. Picture: ANDY ABBOTTCorrie McKeague's mother Nicola Urquhart. Picture: ANDY ABBOTT (Image: Archant)

A spokesman for Suffolk police said: “Careful consideration is always given to all decisions regarding the resourcing of any long-running major investigation.”

In December, an FoI submitted to Suffolk police by David Lamming, and seen by the EADT, revealed that the money for the Corrie investigation had come out of the collaborative budget for Norfolk and Suffolk’s Joint Major Investigation Team (MIT).

The FoI also revealed that the cost of the investigation into the murder of Weybread couple Peter and Sylvia Stuart, also covered by the MIT budget, was £174,622.

Ali Qazimaj, 43, was jailed in March for at least 35 years, but the body of Mrs Stuart has never been found and there is currently no active searching taking place.

Corrie was last seen on CCTV at a loading area behind Greggs, known as the Horseshoe on September 24, 2016.

The airman’s phone signal was tracked from Bury St Edmunds to Barton Mills, leading to the theory that he climbed into a bin and was taken to a waste disposal facility.

Two searches of the Milton landfill site for a trace of the 23-year-old, who was based at RAF Honington, lasted 27 weeks in total, but yielded no results. In December, Corrie’s mother, Nicola Urquhart, said she had passed on allegations to the police regarding her son’s disappearance.

Suffolk police responded by saying that there is “currently no evidence held in the investigation to suggest criminal involvement”.