UK grooming gangs inquiry to begin with Oldham, Bradford, Keighley and London

The national Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs began by putting Oldham, Bradford, Keighley and London at the centre of its first phase, with the government casting the process as a statutory answer to systemic failures that left victims of child sexual exploitation and abuse without protection for years. Baroness Anne Longfield CBE is chairing the three-year inquiry, and its updated terms of reference were sent to the Home Secretary on 27 March 2026.

The inquiry was created in response to recommendation 2 of Baroness Louise Casey’s National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, which said grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation across the country had not gone away. Ministers have said the inquiry is meant to examine not only grooming gangs themselves, but also the institutional response, including how ethnicity, religion and culture were handled in cases where abuse was committed.

London is already under separate pressure. The Metropolitan Police Service is reviewing 9,000 historic cases of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse from the last 15 years in which police or the Crown Prosecution Service took no further action, under Operation Beaconport. The London Assembly says its own investigation will examine what is known about grooming gangs in London, the Met’s response, victim support, prevention, partnership working, and how the Mayor and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime have held the force to account.

Oldham remains one of the most politically charged parts of the story. Oldham Council leader Arooj Shah welcomed the national inquiry on 14 June 2025, saying: "I welcome the Prime Minister's decision to launch a full national statutory inquiry into child sexual exploitation (CSE)." Oldham’s inclusion in the opening phase signals that the inquiry is not being framed as a single-city exercise, but as a national test of how councils, police forces and ministers responded when abuse was brought to them.

What will matter now is whether the inquiry uses its statutory status to expose the local and national breakdowns that allowed exploitation to persist, or whether it settles for a process that reassures the public while leaving the deeper failures intact. With Oldham, Bradford, Keighley and London first under scrutiny, the government has tied its credibility to whether this inquiry reaches beyond symbolism and into accountability.