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

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. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters View image in fullscreen 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. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters London, Oldham, Bradford and Keighley named as first focus of grooming gangs inquiry Inquiry will compel individuals and institutions to explain what they did or did not do to protect children from sexual abuse 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 commissioners have previously said the inquiry will not investigate every area in which grooming gangs operated. More areas will be confirmed as the inquiry sets out phases of its investigation. According to one former solicitor for grooming gang survivors in Oldham, patterns of abuse were first noticed in the town in the early 2000s. Girls living in care homes, some as young as 12, were abused by groups of predominantly Asian men, it was claimed. Despite recent demands from the council for an inquiry, the Home Office in late 2024 told Oldham council that it would not launch a statutory inquiry into the town. The decision prompted Elon Musk, the owner of X, to call for the then safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, to be sent to prison. Concerns about Asian grooming gangs in Keighley were raised in 2003 by the then Labour MP for the town, Ann Cryer. A group of concerned mothers alerted her to the problem in her constituency, stating that their young daughters were being sexually exploited by older Asian men. Police and social services were refusing to act, she said. After going public, Cryer faced accusations that she was a racist and also received threatening notes and phone calls, leading police to install a panic alarm in her house. 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”. T