Terms of reference: super-complaint about the length of police investigations into sexual offences
Updated 28 May 2026
Applies to England and Northern Ireland
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On 15 December 2025, the Centre for Women’s Justice submitted a super-complaint about what it describes as “excessively lengthy police investigations” into sexual offences that are causing significant harm to the public. It made this super-complaint in collaboration with Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre, Rape Crisis England & Wales and Bindmans LLP. The feature of policing under consideration is specifically investigations into sexual offences that exceed three years by investigation length.
In January 2026, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, the College of Policing and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (the investigative bodies) assessed this super-complaint and decided it was eligible for investigation. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services will lead the joint investigation and response.
Although the joint investigation will focus on investigations into sexual offences that exceed three years, it will also consider investigations with shorter durations where there are excessive delays. For the purpose of this investigation, the investigative bodies will consider the length of time taken to investigate sexual offences from when the crime was reported, to the conclusion of the police investigation. The police reach this conclusion when they charge a suspect and/or close the active investigation phase of the case.
Where excessively lengthy or delays to sexual offence investigations are identified, the investigative bodies will consider whether these delays are, or appear to be, causing significant public harm. The investigative bodies will then consider what actions and recommendations, if any, are required to address identified harm.
The investigative bodies will consider the extent of excessive delays in police investigations into sexual offences, including how this affects survivors and public safety.
They will also consider the causes of any delays to these investigations, considering, but not limited to, the factors referred to by the Centre for Women’s Justice in its super-complaint:
- policing prioritisation decisions
- policing resourcing and staffing issues
- policing supervision, leadership and management
- co-operation between the police and Crown Prosecution Service
- changes to pre-charge bail and release under investigation
And they will consider how data on the timeliness of investigations is reported both within police forces and externally to the public, to support transparency, accountability and effective management of long-running investigation.
The police super-complaints system is limited to considering features of policing. We may examine how other organisations work with the police and can make recommendations to any organisation to further improvements in policing.