1. Overview
1.1. The Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs (the Inquiry) is established in
recognition of the great harm experienced by victims and survivors of
grooming gangs and the failures of statutory services that were supposed to
protect them.
1.2. This Inquiry responds to Recommendation 2 of Baroness Casey’s National
Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (June 2025) (the
“National Audit”), which called for a time limited, targeted and proportionate
inquiry into cases of failures or obstruction by statutory services in relevant
local areas. It will identify failures in practice and hold to account the
individuals and institutions responsible for those failures. It must drive real
and lasting change in safeguarding systems and the criminal justice system
at both local and national levels, making sure that lessons are learned and
that victims and survivors are placed at the centre of any future change.
1.3. The Inquiry will take a strong approach to right the wrongs of the past and
must ensure that institutions and individuals will be held to account for past
failings. Under the terms of the Inquiries Act 2005, the Inquiry is unable to
determine criminal or civil liability. For all criminal allegations or evidence
from 1996 to the end of the Inquiry a referral will be made to Operation
Beaconport – an operation that was recommended in Baroness Casey’s
National Audit and which is overseen by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
1.4. Together the Inquiry and Operation Beaconport will bring more perpetrators
to justice, hold statutory services to account, act upon misconduct in public
office, ensure that institutions are not allowed to mark their own homework
and deliver justice for victims and survivors.
1.5. The formal setting-up date of the Inquiry, as per section 5(1)(a) of the
Inquiries Act 2005, is 13 April 2026.
2. Victim and survivor focus
2.1. Victims and survivors must be at the centre of the Inquiry’s approach, with
trauma-informed engagement and support appropriately provided, alongside
a focus on achieving outcomes that respond to victims and survivors’ needs
within the set timescales. The Inquiry must consider where there has been
long-term negative treatment of victims and survivors and its ongoing impact
upon them, their children and families.
2.2. The Inquiry must be clear and open. To ensure that victim and survivor
voices are heard and at the centre of the Inquiry, a Victim and Survivor
Charter must be developed. The Inquiry must work with victims and survivors
to develop this Charter which will set out the Inquiry’s commitment to victims
and survivors on how they will be engaged throughout the Inquiry. The Victim
and Survivor Charter must include the ways in which all victims and survivors can share their experience and evidence with the Inquiry to inform its work
regardless of whether they are in a local investigation area or not.
2.3. Engagement must be inclusive and representative. It must be recognised
that victims and survivors are not all the same, that they may have different
experiences and characteristics, and will have become involved in abuse and
exploitation through different routes. This must include (but should not be
limited to) the Inquiry acknowledging grooming, abuse and exploitation which
happens in person, online, via child trafficking, and through criminal
exploitation. The Inquiry must also recognise that victims and survivors will
have a range of characteristics, different risk factors and vulnerabilities that
may have played into the abuse or the response to that abuse. The
vulnerabilities of children in care and residential care will be carefully
considered by the Inquiry as they relate to group based child sexual
exploitation and abuse. Engagement must include victims and survivors
across England and Wales.
3. Grooming Gangs
3.1. The Chair and Panel must ensure that the Inquiry’s work focuses specifically
on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse committed by ‘grooming
gangs’, as described in the National Audit.
3.2. Group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse is a kind of child sexual
abuse, involving two or more perpetrators who are connected through formal
or informal associations who are involved in or facilitate the sexual
exploitation and abuse of children. This involvement may take many forms,
including introducing children to others for the purpose of exploitation,
trafficking a child for sexual exploitation, taking payment for sexual activity
with a child, or allowing premises to be used for such activities.
4. Purpose and Objectives
4.1. Building on the work of the National Audit, this Inquiry will identify and shine
a light on failings in previous and current responses to tackling grooming
gangs locally and nationally. It will look at evidence of the response in local
areas across England and Wales, as well as at the role of national
government and systems in that response. Any investigations by the Inquiry
must include where things have gone wrong in relation to victims and
survivors who do not live in the investigation area, for example where they
had been trafficked.
4.2. The Inquiry must look at systemic, institutional and individual failures, and
make recommendations for improvements at both national and local levels
as appropriate. This must include looking at the treatment of victims and
survivors before, during and after their abuse, including any lack of support
offered to them by statutory services and any ongoing negative treatment
across generations. The Inquiry must also assess whether the views of
professionals working within statutory services and any culture within those
services negatively affected how victims and survivors were viewed by
professionals, and the treatment of the victims and survivors, their children
and their families. The Inquiry must identify failures in behaviours and
practice which may have amounted to intentional or unintentional inaction or
cover-ups. The Inquiry must hold to account individuals, institutions and
statutory services responsible for those failures. It will not be part of the
Inquiry’s function to determine civil or criminal liability of named individuals or
statutory services. For all criminal allegations and evidence from the Inquiry
between 1996 and the end of the Inquiry a referral will be made to Operation
Beaconport, overseen by the NCA. Where appropriate the Chair and Panel
may ask national inspectorates to support the work of the Inquiry.
4.3. The Inquiry must examine the factors that allowed or caused exploitation and
abuse to happen and go unaddressed at a local and national level – including
the role of ethnicity, religion and culture of perpetrators and victims. This
must include examining the response of statutory bodies and any issues of
denial, as discussed in the National Audit.
4.4. The Inquiry should take account of findings from new research
commissioned by the Home Office in response to Recommendation 10 of the
National Audit, which will explicitly examine the role of ethnicity, religion and
culture, when considering the factors that drive and enable group-based child
sexual exploitation and abuse.
4.5. To fulfil its purpose, the Inquiry will deliver the following focused objectives
through local investigations and a national review. Local investigations may
take several forms including local hearings, written research and collation of
evidence, data collection and analysis.
4.6. Local investigations
4.6.1. The objective of the local investigations is to identify failures in
organisations, systems and procedures, and failures by individual
leaders, in protecting children from grooming gangs within local areas,
and make recommendations for immediate and longer-term change and
improvement where required. For each local inquiry, the Chair and Panel
must set out the historic time period which that local inquiry will focus on,
in line with the evidence they have received. The nature of the local
investigations means that any area may be required by the Inquiry to
undertake alternative forms of review and data collection and analysis
alongside more formal local investigations in specific areas.
4.6.2. Specifically, the Inquiry must consider (as decided by the Chair and
Panel for each local inquiry):
- The nature, adequacy, and timeliness of statutory service responses
(both immediate and long-term) to suspected or confirmed cases of
grooming gangs;
• Missed opportunities for intervention, protection, and effective
collaboration;
• The response to, and impact on, individuals who reported grooming
gang crimes, including victims, survivors, and professionals;
• How different risk factors and vulnerabilities played into the abuse or
the response to that abuse;
• Whether ethnicity, religion or culture played a role in the causes and
response; and
• The extent to which identified failures have led to changes in practice,
policy, or legislation, and whether those changes have been effective
4.6.3. In any local area, this may include examination of the actions of the
following statutory services and related organisations (as determined by
the Chair and Panel; the Chair and Panel may at any time determine
that additional statutory services or related organisations should be
examined on the basis of new evidence):
- Education settings
- Youth and community services, including Youth Offending Teams
- Religious institutions and organisations
- Voluntary or third sector organisations, such as victim support
organisations - Multi-agency partnerships, including Community Safety and Local
Safeguarding Partnerships (and their predecessors) - National and regional safeguarding boards in Wales
- Local authorities (including children’s social care, children’s homes,
family services, housing services, taxi and private hire vehicle
licensing, parks and community cohesion services) - Health services (hospitals, community hospitals, GPs)
- Mental health services (including CAMHS)
- Sexual health and pregnancy advice services
- Police forces
- The wider Criminal Justice System (including the Crown Prosecution
Service) - Educational, health, social care and criminal justice inspectorates
- Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman
- Public Services Ombudsman for Wales
4.6.4. The Inquiry must make referrals to relevant professional bodies, as
appropriate, where failures to carry out duties and responsibilities are
suspected. For all criminal allegations or evidence, a referral will be
made to Operation Beaconport, which is overseen by the NCA.
4.7. National Review
4.7.1. To identify national-level recommendations for change in England and
Wales. These recommendations must be based on information from
local investigations, local hearings, reviews and data collection and
analysis. They must also be informed by those issues already addressed
by the National Audit, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse,
or other government commitments.
4.7.2. Where local investigations find instances of the failure of political or
institutional accountability mechanisms, consider where those instances
have relevance across all of England and Wales and propose actionable
recommendations to address and rectify those failures.
5. Scope
5.1. The Inquiry will cover England and Wales. Should the Inquiry find any
material relating to the other devolved administrations, it will pass them to the
relevant authorities wherever possible. The Inquiry will liaise with the public
inquiry announced by the Scottish Government in February 2026, into
Scotland’s response to group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation, to
ensure appropriate ways of working where cross-border issues arise.
5.2. The Inquiry will not address allegations relating to events in the Overseas
Territories or Crown Dependencies. However, any such allegations received
by the Inquiry will be referred to the relevant law enforcement bodies in those
jurisdictions.
5.3. Exploitation does not necessarily occur in a single location. Any allegations
of exploitation and abuse that crosses jurisdictional bounds will be passed on
to relevant authorities wherever possible.
5.4. For the purposes of this Inquiry “child” means anyone under the age of 18.
However, the Inquiry will consider issues in relation to the exploitation of
individuals over the age of 18, if that abuse started when the individual was a
child.
5.5. The Inquiry must examine issues arising between 1 January 1996 and 31
March 2029. Information the Inquiry receives outside of these dates may still
be considered as part of the wider evidence base and final reporting.
5.6. The Inquiry will consider which local areas to review. The criteria used to
select local areas will be published by the Inquiry within three months of the
formal setting-up date and will be informed by a combination of factors
including the experiences of victims and survivors, and evidence of
prevalence, harm and risk. The Inquiry must not consider that the absence of
identified cases in a local area means that there is no harm being done there – a variety of factors should be considered when selecting local areas. The
Chair and Panel may decide for any local area that public hearings are
required, but in other areas they may not be required. In all cases the Inquiry
must be sensitive to the impact on victims and survivors.
6. Governance
6.1. The Inquiry will be led by a Chair and two Panellists, appointed by the
Secretary of State for the Home Department, under the Inquiries Act 2005.
6.2. The Chair may also appoint assessors or advisors to assist the work of the
Inquiry.
6.3. In addition to their roles and responsibilities under the Inquiries Act 2005, the
Chair and Panel should in particular:
- Oversee the Inquiry’s relationship with the National Police Operation
(Operation Beaconport); - Work with law enforcement partners to draw up a mechanism to allow
proactive information sharing between law enforcement partners,
including Operation Beaconport, and the Inquiry; - Consider how victim and survivor testimony will inform the work of the
Inquiry, through meaningful engagement and trauma-informed
practice; and - Seek to achieve the most efficient use of both time and resources,
keeping cost to the minimum possible, and leading to conclusions
within the shortest possible time
6.4. In undertaking its work, the Inquiry may, where necessary and appropriate,
engage with matters that intersect with ongoing criminal investigations. The
Inquiry must take all necessary steps to avoid prejudicing such
investigations, including liaising with relevant law enforcement bodies. The
Inquiry’s work is conducted under the authority of its Terms of Reference and
is not intended to interfere with or substitute for criminal proceedings. Where
there are lines of inquiry the Inquiry is unable to pursue within the timescales
established by these Terms of Reference due to ongoing criminal
proceedings, this should be noted in the relevant report but must not delay
the timely delivery of that report.
6.5. Within six months of the formal setting-up date of the Inquiry, Operation
Beaconport and the Inquiry should jointly publish a Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU). This document must set out the principles, protocols,
and mechanisms for collaboration between the Inquiry and policing
colleagues.
6.6. The Inquiry will operate for no more than three years, within a budget of £65
million. Within three months of the formal setting up date, the Chair and
Panel must determine what must be delivered within this timeframe and
budget (and dates for those deliverables) and agree that assessment with
the Home Secretary.
6.7. These Terms of Reference must be reviewed on an annual basis between
the Home Secretary and the Chair and Panel, with consultation with Welsh
Ministers as appropriate, including to review progress and ensure the Inquiry
can deliver within budget and to time. If timescales or budget are at risk the
Chair and Panel have a duty to provide the Home Secretary with proposals
to remedy that.
7. Recommendations and reporting
7.1. The Inquiry will publish findings and recommendations for each local
investigation (as set out in section 4.6) in accordance with the agreed
timetable and aligned with the objectives set out above. These local
investigation reports must be made publicly available.
7.2. The Inquiry must proceed with sufficient pace to ensure that its
recommendations can be implemented swiftly and effectively.
7.3. The Inquiry may publish interim reports and emerging findings during its
three-year duration in relation to both local investigations (as set out in
section 4.6), and national findings as the Chair and Panel deem appropriate.
The final report must be submitted to the Home Secretary by 31 March 2029.
7.4. Local and national recommendations must be informed by consultation with
the authorities most likely to be charged with their implementation.
7.5. Any reports of the Inquiry or necessary updates must also be shared with the
First Minister for Wales as appropriate.