A national inquiry into child sexual abuse by grooming gangs has announced targeted investigations will take place in Birmingham and Wales.
The inquiry said the probes would “examine the sexual abuse and exploitation of children by grooming gangs and the response of organisations responsible for protecting children” in both areas.
Oldham in Greater Manchester, Bradford and Keighley in West Yorkshire and London were announced as the first locations for local investigations earlier this year.
It is unclear whether further locations will be selected. Some survivors have expressed frustration that their area has not yet been included and said they were concerned about expanding the inquiry’s scope.
Fiona Goddard said there was clearly evidence from Birmingham and Wales “that need to be properly heard” and welcomed their inclusion, but told the BBC the scale of the inquiry “must not come at the expense of the depth of investigation”.
She said this was especially concerning given “we are already almost a year into the inquiry with relatively little progress”.
Carly, not her real name, was 12 years old when she was first groomed in Huddersfield in 2004. She said she could not understand “how an investigation covering an area as enormous and complex as Wales can be described as a deep dive”.
“How are survivors in Huddersfield supposed to have confidence that our experiences will not simply be absorbed into a much bigger national picture and effectively watered down?”
The Statutory Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs in England and Wales was announced by former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in June 2025 and started work in April.
Chaired by former children’s commissioner Baroness Anne Longfield, it has the power to compel individuals and institutions to explain what they “did or did not do to protect children from being sexually abused”, and will look at the nature and scale of abuse in each area.
It faced turbulence prior to launching when abuse survivors called on former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to quit.
The inquiry has previously said areas are chosen for investigation based on criteria including how victims and survivors were treated when they came forward, and whether opportunities to prevent harm were missed.
It said its decision to conduct an investigation in Birmingham reflected a combination of factors “including victim and survivor experience, indications of prevalence, harm and risk, and public concern”.
Panel member Zoë Billingham said: “We will look carefully at what organisations knew, how decisions were made, how agencies worked together, and why opportunities to protect children were missed”.
The investigation in Wales will also examine the operation of devolved arrangements and cross-border working between organisations in Wales and England. Baroness Longfield said victims and survivors in Wales had waited “too long for answers”.
