Birmingham and Wales Added to Growing List of Grooming Gangs Inquiry Investigations

The statutory national inquiry examining child sexual abuse carried out by grooming gangs has confirmed that Birmingham and Wales will be the next two areas subjected to detailed local investigation. The announcement marks a significant expansion of the inquiry's footprint, which has already committed to examining Oldham in Greater Manchester, Bradford and Keighley in West Yorkshire, and London.

Chaired by Baroness Anne Longfield, the former children's commissioner for England, the inquiry is tasked with conducting targeted investigations in specific areas across England and Wales. Each local strand is designed to establish the nature and scale of abuse in that particular community, while also scrutinising how local authorities, police forces, social services and other safeguarding bodies responded to reports and signs of exploitation.

The inquiry holds statutory powers, meaning it can compel individuals and institutions to provide evidence and explain what they did or did not do to protect children from sexual abuse. That authority gives the panel the ability to demand documents, summon witnesses and hold organisations to account in a way that non-statutory reviews cannot.

In explaining why Birmingham was selected, the inquiry cited a combination of factors, including the experiences of victims and survivors, indications of prevalence, harm and risk, and broader public concern about the issue in the area. The city's inclusion reflects long-standing questions about how agencies in the West Midlands handled allegations of organised child sexual exploitation over a period of many years.

Panel member Zoë Billingham said the investigation would look carefully at what organisations knew, how decisions were made, how agencies worked together, and why opportunities to protect children were missed. Her comments underline the inquiry's focus not only on the abuse itself but on systemic failures that allowed it to continue.

Baroness Longfield addressed the Wales investigation directly, stating that victims and survivors there had waited far too long for answers. She said the inquiry would help the panel understand why children were not protected and what needs to change in future, signalling that the Welsh strand will examine both historical failings and the reforms required to prevent repetition.

The decision to conduct a dedicated investigation in Wales recognises that child protection operates under a distinct devolved framework, with different governance arrangements, safeguarding boards and police structures compared with England. The inquiry will need to navigate those differences as it assesses how effectively agencies in Wales collaborated to identify and disrupt grooming networks.

The national inquiry itself was announced by former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in June 2025, following years of campaigning by survivors and mounting political pressure for a comprehensive reckoning with organised child sexual exploitation. It was formally established as a statutory independent inquiry into grooming gangs in England and Wales.

Its launch was not without controversy. Abuse survivors publicly called on former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to resign, creating a period of turbulence that threatened to overshadow the inquiry's early development. Despite that pressure, the inquiry began its work in April this year, armed with a budget of £65 million to fund investigations, research and survivor engagement.

The inquiry has previously set out the criteria it uses to decide which areas merit a full local investigation. These include how victims and survivors were treated when they first came forward to report abuse, and whether agencies missed opportunities to prevent harm. Areas where there are strong indications of widespread or organised exploitation, or where institutional responses appear to have failed repeatedly, are more likely to be selected.

The inclusion of Birmingham and Wales follows the announcement of the first wave of locations, which covered Oldham, Bradford and Keighley, and London. Each of those investigations will run alongside the national inquiry's broader thematic work, which examines patterns, practices and policy failures that cut across multiple regions.

For victims and survivors in Birmingham and Wales, the announcement offers a formal route to have their experiences examined and their testimony heard within a legal framework that can compel cooperation. Many have waited years, sometimes decades, for authorities to acknowledge the scale of what happened and to hold those responsible to account.

The inquiry's findings in each area are expected to feed into national recommendations on safeguarding reform, policing practice, and the way institutions respond to disclosures of child sexual exploitation. The panel has repeatedly emphasised that its purpose is not only to document past failures but to identify concrete changes that will protect children in the future.

With investigations now confirmed in five distinct locations and the national inquiry continuing its work, the scale of the undertaking continues to grow. The £65 million budget reflects the complexity of examining multi-agency failures across different regions, each with its own local history, institutional culture and record of responding to vulnerable children.

For Birmingham and Wales, the coming months will bring scrutiny of decisions taken by councils, police forces, health bodies and voluntary organisations. The inquiry's ability to compel evidence means those institutions will be required to account for their actions, something survivors have long demanded but rarely received through other channels.

The inquiry's final conclusions are still some way off, but each new investigation announced signals a widening recognition that organised grooming and exploitation was not confined to a handful of towns or cities. Instead, the pattern appears to have emerged in communities across England and Wales, raising uncomfortable questions about how consistently authorities failed to intervene.