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

London, Oldham, Bradford and Keighley will be the first towns and cities investigated by an independent grooming gangs inquiry, it was announced on Wednesday.The independent inquiry into grooming gangs has confirmed that its three-part hearings will investigate Whitehall departments and politicians alongside local councils, the NHS and national police institutions.Chaired by Anne Longfield, it will compel individuals and institutions to explain what they “did or did not do to protect children from being sexually abused”, a statement said.There has been months of lobbying from survivors and campaigners over which areas will be included.The inquiry’s commissioners had said the inquiry would not investigate every area where grooming gangs had operated. More areas will be confirmed as the inquiry sets out phases of its investigation.Fiona Goddard, who was 14 and living in a children’s home in Bradford when the grooming and abuse began during the late 2000s, said it had been “a long fight”.“Bradford has evaded inquiries for many, many years and it’s time that the full truth about what happened comes out,” she said.Robbie Moore, the Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkley, who had called on the government to include Bradford in the inquiry, said the decision marked “a significant turning point”.The inquiry team said London had been picked in part because it has the highest rate of referrals for child sexual exploitation in the country.A statement said the inquiry would assess “the wider network of grooming gangs across London’s satellite towns and cities” and that it would “investigate the role of London in the national network of grooming gangs”.More than 800 recommendations relating to grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation and abuse dating back to the 1990s have been identified by the inquiry.The inquiry team said that there had been “significant inconsistency” in how these recommendations have been implemented.The national accountability hearings in their third phase will investigate tech companies and the “role of technology in the exploitation of children by grooming gangs”.Longfield, a former children’s commissioner for England, was chosen to lead the inquiry despite demands from some survivors for a judge.The inquiry was set up after Louise Casey ran a “rapid audit” on gang-based exploitation and recommended that the government establish both a national police operation and a national inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation.Casey judged that evidence showing the disproportionate representation of men of Asian ethnicity exploiting white teenage girls in some areas “warrants further examination”.The government accepted all of Casey’s recommendations and committed to establishing a national inquiry.The first batch of grooming gang cases that are among the national review of previously closed files has been referred back to police forces where lines of inquiry may have been missed.Operation Beaconport is examining cases between January 2010 and March 2025 where there are two or more suspects accused of sexual abuse and they are still alive; there is a victim of a sexual offence with physical contact; cases have not already been reviewed; and no further action had been taken.In November, 1,273 such investigations from 23 police forces had already been referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA), 236 of which were prioritised because they involved allegations of rape.Beaconport will receive nearly £38m this year, a Home Office statement has said – up from £4m given last year.But police sources have said the money will “likely fall short” of the amount needed to cover work to tackle group-based child exploitation.Labour has faced political pressure to tackle grooming gangs, which has become a central campaigning issue for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.