Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average time is for grooming-gang offences to proceed through the judicial system from initial report to final decision.

Information on timeliness through the criminal justice system is published as part of the quarterly Accredited Official Statistics series “Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly” which is available at the link provided: Criminal court statistics.

Information on whether defendants dealt with are part of ‘grooming gangs’ is not centrally identified in the criminal courts data systems relevant to this question. Therefore, it is not possible to provide the specific information requested.

The Government’s priority is to take action on delivering the recommendations of the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). The Home Secretary announced that we will be bringing in mandatory reporting, making grooming an aggravating factor in CSA cases, and introducing a new performance framework for policing.