Grooming gangs inquiry to investigate London, Bradford, Keighley and Oldham

Grooming gangs inquiry to investigate London, Bradford, Keighley and Oldham The first places to be investigated by the Statutory Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs will be Oldham, Bradford and Keighley, and London, with more areas to be confirmed soon The independent inquiry into Grooming Gangs has announced its first areas for specific local investigations. Oldham, Bradford and Keighley, and London will all be investigated by the Statutory Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs, with more areas to be confirmed soon. The £65 million probe is investigating how grooming gangs operated and how police, councils, health services, social care services and schools responded. It will also examine whether other areas which have already had reviews into grooming gangs, such as Telford, Rochdale, Oxford and Rotherham, have implemented the changes recommended to them. Oldham was announced as a local area for investigation last year, with evidence already being gathered. In Bradford and Keighley, concerns have been raised over many years by victims and survivors, campaigners, elected representatives and others. These concerns will now be examined directly by the Inquiry. In London, the Inquiry will examine how group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse by grooming gangs has been identified and responded to, including London’s links with surrounding or connected areas. It will also take account of relevant work underway, including by the London Assembly. Alongside these announcements, the Inquiry is publishing its Victims and Survivors Charter, which sets out how victims and survivors will be supported to share their experiences with the Inquiry and influence its work. Any evidence of crimes uncovered will be referred to Operation Beaconport, the national police operation launched last year to review hundreds of previously closed investigations. Former children’s commissioner for England Baroness Anne Longfield is heading up the inquiry, which has the legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence and require organisations to hand over documents. She said: "The Inquiry’s task is to find out why this catastrophic failure of the state happened and continues to happen, to establish why victims and survivors of abuse were failed, and to hold to account those institutions and individuals who failed them. “Our National Accountability Hearings will begin before the end of the year. There have been many inquiries and reviews into grooming gangs and Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse over the past 20 years, putting forward over 800 recommendations, many of which have not been implemented. These hearings will help us to establish what national institutions and services should have been doing to implement these findings and to protect children from abuse and harm - and what, if any, progress has been made in areas where investigations have taken place. “We are determined that our work ensures that no further inquiries into grooming gangs will ever be needed.”