Offences against Children

(asked on 11th September 2026) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many individuals identified as members of organised grooming gangs have been charged with and convicted of rape offences in the United Kingdom in each of the last ten years.


Answered by
Sarah Jones Portrait
Sarah Jones
Minister of State (Home Office)
This question was answered on 22nd September 2026

The Home Office does not hold the information requested. Information on criminal offences and criminal justice outcomes is not routinely recorded or published in a way that identifies whether an offender was a member of an organised grooming gang.

Data on the total number of charges for rape offences, not specifically those relating to grooming gangs, recorded in England and Wales for each of the last ten years is shown below. As policing is devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Home Office does not hold equivalent data for those jurisdictions.

Financial year ending

Number of charges for rape offences

March 2017

4,543

March 2018

3,775

March 2019

2,596

March 2020

2,404

March 2021

3,159

March 2022

3,158

March 2023

3,954

March 2024

4,965

March 2025

5,486

March 2026

6,976

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on convictions for rape offences in its Criminal Justice System statistics. These data do not identify whether offenders were members of organised grooming gangs. Ministry of Justice date is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly-march-2026

The Government is committed to improving its understanding of, and response to, group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. This includes investing in specialist policing capabilities through the Tackling Organised Exploitation (TOEX) Programme and the Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce to improve the identification of offenders, support victims and bring perpetrators to justice. The Government is also implementing all of Baroness Casey’s recommendations following her National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.

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