Police will begin a full-scale search of part of a landfill site at Milton in Cambridgeshire this week as part of the continuing investigation to find Corrie McKeague.

Over the last couple of weeks, police have been completing preparatory work, including building access routes to the area of the site that needs to be searched, before the moving of 8,000 tonnes of bulk material can begin. 

Corrie McKeague, 23, from Dunfermline, went missing on a night out with friends in Bury St Edmunds on September 24. He has not been seen since.

Detective Superintendent Katie Elliott said: "The search is likely to take six to ten weeks to complete, although this will obviously depend on daily progress on the site. We have a large area – around 920 square metres, up to a depth of eight metres – of waste to search through and a plan has been put in place to manage this process to ensure a thorough and comprehensive search is undertaken.

"Teams of specialist search trained police officers from both Suffolk and Norfolk will be carrying out the work to find anything that may be linked to the investigation.

"We need to find Corrie and discover what happened to him. While the search may not provide the answers as to what happened it is something we need to do as our investigation continues.”

CCTV has shown that shortly after Corrie was last seen, a waste lorry made a collection in the area. 

The lorry was seized in the early stages of the enquiry for forensic examination but this did not reveal any traces of him.

However, the waste collection has been one line of enquiry police have persisted with and kept under constant review.

The area of the landfill site where waste collected from Bury St Edmunds that morning was deposited has not had further items put onto it since police alerted the site early in the investigation.