Independent report

Government response to the National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse report

Published 16 June 2025

Group-based child sexual exploitation, committed by grooming gangs, is one of the most horrific crimes imaginable. Young girls, as young as 10, exploited, abused, plied with drugs and alcohol, brutally raped by gangs of men and then disgracefully let down again and again by the authorities who were meant to protect them and keep them safe. Those despicable crimes cause the most profound harm to victims and survivors throughout their lives. This scandal, and the abhorrent continuing crimes of child sexual exploitation and abuse that persist in this country today, are a stain on our society. We will be unrelenting in our work to root out these horrific crimes, to punish perpetrators and to protect children from harm. 

We will therefore accept all 12 recommendations from Baroness Casey’s National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation, which will build upon the significant workstreams already underway to tackle this heinous offending, to get justice for victims and survivors, and to get perpetrators behind bars. 

Recommendation 1

The law in England and Wales should be changed so adults who intentionally penetrate the vagina, anus or mouth of a child under 16 receive mandatory charges of rape

Government response: The government will change the law to ensure that adult abusers who intentionally penetrate the vagina, anus or mouth of an under 16 are charged with rape.  

• Our laws must never provide protection for the adult abusers rather than the child victims of these despicable crimes. We share Baroness Casey’s view that adults who intentionally penetrate the vagina, anus or mouth of a child under 16 should face the most serious charges and we accept the recommendation to change the law in this area.
• We will need close consultation with the CPS and police as we develop this legislative change, recognising that charging decisions are a matter for them.
• We need to carefully consider the changes that we make so that the law continues to target those intent on harm, and we limit the risk of criminalising young people in genuinely consensual relationships.

Recommendation 2

A national police operation and national inquiry, coordinating a series of targeted investigations should be launched into child sexual exploitation in England and Wales

A national criminal investigation

Government response: The government will support the National Crime Agency (NCA) and policing to launch a national criminal operation into group-based child sexual exploitation.

• Since January, as a result of the new investment and policy approach announced by the Home Secretary, over 800 grooming gangs cases that were originally dropped by the police have now been identified for formal review, with police forces being asked to re-open investigations and pursue new lines of inquiry, where appropriate, in order to get more perpetrators behind bars.
• To build on this crucial work, we will now work with the NCA and police forces to launch a new national criminal operation on grooming gangs and wider group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE).
• We will start work now to design a new national operation encompassing policing and all statutory partners that targets the most egregious offenders. These heinous criminals should be under no doubt that we will take comprehensive action with every tool at our disposal to bring them to justice.
• For the first time, this operation will bring together all arms of the national and local policing response to child sexual exploitation under a single national operation. The national operation will support both historic and current investigations, providing national expertise and specialism to support local intelligence-led investigations.
• We will draw on best practice from the NCA’s Operation Stovewood and West Yorkshire Police’s innovative ‘Smith algorithm’ to ensure the new operation is taking an intelligence-led approach to identifying risk to children and taking swift action, including with local partners.
• This national criminal operation will have a clear objective to help forces and local areas to identify criminal activity, bring more perpetrators to justice and keep children safe from harm.
• The operation will be overseen by the NCA and will encompass existing specialist capability such as the CSE Taskforce, Operation Hydrant and the Tackling Organised Exploitation Programme (TOEX).
• We will also look to develop a rigorous new National Operating Model for investigating the complex crimes of group-based CSE to be rolled out for use by all forces to ensure that when it comes to getting justice, there is no postcode lottery for victims and survivors of these vile crimes. This will be factored into our plans for Police Reform.
• We will continue to ensure a retained focus on the broader threat of child sexual abuse and exploitation, of which group-based offending is a part.

A national inquiry co-ordinating a series of targeted local investigations

Government response: The government will establish a national inquiry under the Inquiries Act to co-ordinate a series of targeted local investigations.

• Established under the Inquiries Act and headed by an independent chair, the Independent Commission on Grooming Gangs will have statutory powers to direct targeted investigations in local areas, with the aim of holding institutions to account for current and historic failures in their response to group-based CSE.
• The commission will have the powers to compel local organisations to comply with its investigations, including providing information and summoning witnesses where required to get to the truth and learn lessons from the past.
• Following the appointment of the independent chair, the commission will urgently begin considering evidence and data to decide the first local areas for investigation. This will be based on information provided by the police, inspectorates, or through referrals from local agencies, victims and survivors, and members of the public. We will now work at pace to appoint a chair and agree a Terms of Reference.
• The Commission will be time-limited. The exact length of time will be determined by the terms of reference.

Recommendation 3

Review the criminal convictions of victims of child sexual exploitation. Disregard any convictions where the government finds victims were criminalised instead of protected

Government response: The government will disregard convictions of children who were criminalised as prostitutes when they should have been protected.

• We will legislate immediately in the Crime and Policing Bill to introduce a disregard scheme for the convictions of individuals who were found guilty of prostitution offences as children. The criminal law has rightly evolved to make clear that children cannot be prostitutes, and it is long overdue that individuals convicted of child prostitution offences have their convictions disregarded and criminal records expunged.
• We have repeatedly heard from victims the long-lasting damage that having a criminal record hanging over them into adulthood has caused, and it is imperative that this change is made to ensure those survivors can begin to heal and move on with their lives.
• The report signals concern that a wider cohort of victims of child sexual exploitation may have been unjustly criminalised when their position as victims of group based CSE was not properly identified or understood by the relevant authorities. We will work with relevant bodies across the criminal justice system to ensure any such cases are identified, reviewed and that victims are properly supported. The overturning of criminal convictions in individual cases is a matter for the Courts.

Recommendation 4

The government should make mandatory the collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases and work with the police to improve the collection of ethnicity data for victims

Government response: We will make it a requirement for the police to collect ethnicity and nationality data of perpetrators of group-based CSE.

• To address the woefully inadequate existing data on ethnicity of perpetrators, in January the Home Secretary asked the CSE Taskforce to work with police forces to change their recording practices so that ethnicity data is collected from closed cases (when more suspects may have been identified and more information may have come to light), as well as when cases are first opened. An initial pilot of this approach conducted by the CSE Taskforce using the data of eight police forces has significantly improved the collection of ethnicity data for suspects.
• However, the government recognises that this data must be available in all cases in order to develop the most accurate and robust picture of the nature of this offending and will therefore make it a requirement for the police to collect ethnicity and nationality data in every case of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
• The Home Office will also work with policing to improve the collection of ethnicity data of victims. It is imperative that we fully understand the drivers behind this abuse to inform how we can best prevent and tackle it.

Recommendation 5

Mandatory sharing of information should be enforced between all statutory safeguarding partners in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation. Compliance should be monitored by the inspectorates and overseen by the proposed Child Protection Authority

Government response: The government will deliver this vital change to ensure that information is shared where it is necessary to safeguard children.

• Through the new information sharing duty introduced in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we are making it unequivocally clear: information must be shared where it is necessary to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This duty provides a robust legal foundation for safeguarding partners to act decisively and collaboratively.
• This new duty is designed to work hand-in-hand with the mandatory reporting duty set out in the Crime and Policing Bill. Together, these measures ensure that once a disclosure is made, the relevant information is not only received — but is shared swiftly and appropriately with the agencies best placed to protect the child.
• To support practitioners in meeting these new responsibilities, we will publish statutory guidance.
• We will work across government to engage with the relevant inspectorates to ensure that the new multi-agency information sharing duty is embedded in the relevant accountability frameworks.
• The Child Protection Authority will have a critical role to play in addressing this recommendation. We are clear that the CPA must play a role in national oversight and co-ordination between agencies to ensure this improves at all levels.

Recommendation 6

The Department for Education should move swiftly to introduce unique reference numbers for children to improve opportunities for agencies to better share their information about children at risk of child sexual abuse

Government response: The government is delivering this manifesto commitment through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

• The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes provisions that empower the Secretary of State for Education to introduce a consistent identifier for children. This will be set out in regulations, including the number to be used and the agencies required to adopt it.
• We are committed to introducing this consistent identifier as soon as possible.
• We are undertaking a series of test-and-learn pilots, using the NHS number as the proposed consistent identifier. Piloting is already underway in Wigan Local Authority, and we are exploring onboarding a small number of additional local authorities to test connectivity with the NHS Personal Demographic Service. This will enable local authorities to automatically access NHS numbers for children known to their social care services.

Recommendation 7

Police information systems should be upgraded. These systems should also provide for the use of the unique reference numbers for children which are being introduced by the Department for Education

Government response: We will act at pace to upgrade police information systems to better enable the tracking of intelligence links across forces.

• The Home Office will work with policing to review all relevant systems to ensure they allow for the necessary level of sharing between forces and upgrade systems where required as part of the reforms in the forthcoming Police Reform White Paper. This will improve investigations across police force boundaries to ensure perpetrators cannot evade justice.
• We will work with police forces and suppliers to ensure information systems are able to process the new unique reference numbers for children. We will take innovative approaches to developing solutions for information sharing including through engaging the market to develop new tools.

Recommendation 8

CSE investigations should be approached like Serious and Organised Crime

Government response: Through the national criminal operation and with the leadership of the NCA and NPCC, we will work with police forces to drive consistency and rigour into CSE investigations.

• The new national criminal operation, overseen by the NCA, will draw on its expertise tackling Serious and Organised Crime.
• By developing a new National Operating Model for tackling complex Child Sexual Exploitation cases, we will ensure this horrific crime gets the attention and resources it deserves by law enforcement and through the criminal justice system. This model should be rolled out by all police forces to ensure that there is quality and consistency in CSE investigations across the country and all forces are brought up to the standard of the best.

Recommendation 9

The DfE should urgently interrogate child protection data to identify the causes of the decline in child sexual abuse and exploitation representation in child in need assessment data; examine the reasons for variations across local authorities; and review the effectiveness of Serious Incident Notifications in relation to child sexual abuse and exploitation

Government response: The government will urgently review child protection data.

• We must better understand the decline in child sexual abuse and exploitation representation in child in need assessment data and the reasons for variations across local authorities.
• We will therefore publish analysis by the end of 2025 that aims to better understand what has happened regarding the decline in child protection data on child sexual abuse and exploitation.
• This will include analysis of child abuse victims’ demographics, outcomes, trends and local area variation over time. We will also work with the CSA centre to understand the specific issues outlined in this recommendation and will publish any related research once concluded.
• We will also look at the overall fall in serious incident notifications and exploring whether there is underreporting and if there is, what the reasons for this might be.

Recommendation 10

The government should commission research into the drivers for group-based child sexual exploitation, including online offending, cultural factors and the role of the group

Government response: The Home Office will commission new research into the drivers of group-based CSE.

• The Home Office will appoint an independent reviewer to lead a programme of research across communities, academia and public institutions, examining the cultural and social drivers of child sexual exploitation, misogyny and violence against women and girls, looking at different ethnicities and age groups, and different modes of offending.
• This research will take a comprehensive look at patterns of abuse, why abusers abuse and seek to identify opportunities to intervene early or transform attitudes to women and girls.

Recommendation 11

The Department for Transport should take immediate action to put a stop to ‘out of area taxis’ and bring in more rigorous statutory standards for local authority licensing and regulation of taxi drivers

Government response: The Department for Transport will legislate to address the important issues raised in the report, tackling the inconsistent standards of taxi and private hire vehicle driver licensing.

• We will work as quickly as possible and consider all options – including out of area working, national standards and enforcement – seeking the best overall outcomes for passenger safety.
• In the interim we will act urgently to make improvements, including consulting on making local transport authorities responsible for taxi and private hire vehicle licensing, and determining how existing statutory guidance can be strengthened to further protect the public.
• We are also reviewing authorities’ compliance with existing guidance and will hold those who do not follow it to account.

Recommendation 12

The government should commit to fully resourcing the implementation of these recommendations over multiple years and to tracking their implementation across Departments and other organisations, with regular reports to Parliament

• The government accepts this recommendation.