Letter from Home Secretary to Councillor Shah
Published 10 December 2025
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Home Secretary
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
09 December 2025
Dear Councillor Arooj Shah,
Thank you for your engagement to date regarding next steps for Oldham’s inquiry into child sexual exploitation.
This Government is committed to doing everything in our power to tackle the horrific crimes of child sexual abuse and exploitation, including exposing the failures that have happened across the country, and making sure that it can never happen again. I recognise your Council’s clear commitment to confronting these horrific crimes. I know that the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Jess Phillips, has also engaged extensively with victims and survivors in Oldham, and has heard clearly from them about their hopes and expectations from an inquiry and what it is able to achieve.
As you are aware, in January my predecessor made a commitment to develop a local inquiries framework and support local inquiries into child sexual exploitation, including making funding available to Oldham Council to undertake a local review. Since then, Baroness Casey published her audit on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse in June, and the Government accepted all 12 recommendations, including to establish a new national inquiry. Today, I have announced that Baroness Longfield has been appointed to Chair the Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs, supported by panellists Zoë Billingham and Eleanor Kelly.
The new national inquiry will undertake targeted investigations in local areas. It will have full statutory powers under the Inquiries Act 2005 to compel evidence, establish the facts of what happened, identify failures by institutions and individuals, and make recommendations for change.
It is important that Oldham benefits fully from these statutory powers and extensive resources available through the national inquiry. I am pleased to confirm that Baroness Longfield has agreed to prioritise Oldham as an area for local investigation under the national inquiry. The work you have already done locally to prepare for this will undoubtedly help with this approach.
I know victims and survivors have had to wait too long for an inquiry in Oldham. Baroness Longfield has offered to visit Oldham early in the New Year to meet with victims and survivors, and will share further details in due course.
Yours sincerely,
Rt Hon Shabana Mahmood MP Home Secretary