Police are combing a rural location near West Kingsdown as they continue to search for murder victim Sarah Wellgreen.

Teams of officers have been scouring the area near Terry's Lodge Road and at the transmitting mast site at the top of Wrotham Hill, with officers seen searching through undergrowth yesterday and today.

PS Ryan Laws, who has overseen the search operation, said teams had been searching the area again as part of a review of the case, and because the terrain has changed over time. It is understood no new information has come to light in the hunt for the mother of five.

Sarah disappeared from her New Ash Green home in October 2018, and while her body has never been found her former partner Ben Lacomba, 40, was found guilty of her murder and jailed for 27 years in November last year.

While he claimed to have stayed at home on the night she disappeared, between October 9 and October 10 2018, CCTV showed Lacomba's car had driven out of new Ash Green and down country lanes in the early hours of October 10, before being picked up on camera at Plaxdale Green Road - near to the sites recently searched again.

Lacomba's car was not picked up again on CCTV cameras for some two hours, when it was again returning along the same route.

A wealth of other evidence, including the fact Lacomba turned off his own CCTV in the hours that Sarah disappeared, threw his phone into the Thames in the wake of her disappearance, and was found to be in possession of a long-handled grave-digger's shovel, helped a jury determine he was guilty of murder.

He remains in prison and has never revealed where or how he disposed of Sarah's body.

Since her disappearance hundreds of locations around the county have been searched by a dedicated police team and members of the Search for Sarah Wellgreen community group.

Police spokesman Vicki Foster said: “On Friday, May 1, specialist officers attempting to locate the body of Sarah Wellgreen searched several sites in the West Kingsdown area. On this occasion nothing of note was found.”

KMTV reports on the jailing of Ben Lacomba

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