London, Oldham, Bradford and Keighley named as first focus of grooming gangs inquiry

The statutory inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation will begin its first local investigations in London, Oldham, Bradford and Keighley, setting out the opening focus of a wider national process.

The inquiry is being chaired by Anne Longfield and will use compulsory powers to require witnesses and organisations to provide evidence and documents. It is expected to examine how police, councils, the NHS, schools and Whitehall bodies responded to signs of abuse, and where institutional failures allowed cases to continue.

The naming of the first four areas gives the inquiry a concrete starting point after years of pressure from survivors and campaigners for a national statutory process. London was selected in part because the inquiry said it has the highest rate of referrals for child sexual exploitation in the country.

Oldham, Bradford and Keighley have also been closely associated with major grooming gang cases and repeated calls for formal scrutiny. The inquiry’s opening phase is intended to begin in places where the scale of abuse, the response of public bodies and the handling of previous warnings are likely to be examined in detail.

How the inquiry will work

The inquiry is being run in three phases. Its team has said it has identified more than 800 recommendations relating to grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation dating back to the 1990s, and that there has been significant inconsistency in how those recommendations were implemented.

That means the inquiry is not limited to individual offenders. It is also meant to test whether institutions missed warning signs, failed to share information, or did not act when concerns were raised repeatedly over many years.

The inquiry will also be able to refer evidence of crimes uncovered during its work to Operation Beaconport for police review. Operation Beaconport is already reviewing previously closed cases from 2010 to 2025, giving the inquiry a possible route from historical investigation to fresh criminal assessment.

Background and pressure for action

The opening of the inquiry follows long-running pressure from survivors and campaigners who argued that the response to grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation had been fragmented and inconsistent for too long.

Public scrutiny has focused not only on individual abuse cases but also on what councils, police forces, health services and other institutions knew, when they knew it, and whether they acted decisively enough. That institutional question sits at the centre of the inquiry’s remit.

The first named locations suggest that the inquiry will begin by examining some of the most contested and heavily scrutinised local histories before expanding to further areas. Additional towns and cities are expected to be named as the process continues.

What remains unclear

The exact timetable for hearings has not yet been fully set out in the public reporting. The order in which the inquiry will move through its phases has also not been clearly published.

Some coverage has put the inquiry’s budget at £65 million over three years, although that figure has not been directly confirmed in the accessible official material. The core confirmed point is that the inquiry has now identified its first local focus and has a mechanism to pass any newly uncovered criminal evidence to police.

For now, the four named areas mark the start of a broader examination of how abuse was allowed to persist and how public bodies responded when concerns were raised.