Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what guidance she has provided to local authorities on grooming gang inquiries.

The Government continues work to deliver meaningful change for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and exploitation, including group-based child sexual exploitation or grooming gangs.

The Home Secretary wrote to all local authorities on 12 March 2025 to inform them of our plans, including our investment of £10 million, which will support the Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce in working with police forces to re-examine investigations and pursue new lines of inquiry where appropriate to deliver justice for more victims, alongside expanding the Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel so victims can have their cases reviewed even if it happened after 2013. This also includes a new national fund to support independent local inquiries and help strengthen local responses to child sexual exploitation.

We are currently awaiting Baroness Louise Casey's report following her national audit into the nature, scale and characteristics of grooming gangs offending, and we will publish more detail and next steps on this work, alongside Baroness Casey's report, in the coming weeks.