After months of uncertainty and public outcry, the UK government has finally appointed Baroness Anne Longfield, the former Children’s Commissioner for England, to chair the long-awaited national inquiry into grooming gangs. The announcement, made in the House of Commons on December 9, 2025, by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, marks a pivotal moment in the country’s ongoing reckoning with the systematic sexual exploitation of children by organized groups—a scandal that has haunted communities and institutions for years.
The road to this announcement has been anything but smooth. The inquiry, originally announced by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in June 2025 following recommendations from Baroness Louise Casey’s rapid national audit, was thrown into disarray after four women resigned from its survivor liaison panel and two leading chair candidates withdrew in October. Survivors and advocates expressed growing frustration over the delays, with one survivor’s father telling Sky News that the new chair “needs to win the trust of survivors.” That sentiment has echoed throughout the process, highlighting the need for genuine engagement and transparency as the inquiry moves forward.
Baroness Longfield, who served as Children’s Commissioner from 2015 to 2021 and was elevated to the House of Lords earlier this year, will step down from the Labour whip to ensure impartiality in her new role. She will be joined by Zoe Billingham, former inspector at His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and current chair of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, and Eleanor Kelly, the former chief executive of Southwark Council known for her work supporting survivors of the London Bridge terrorist attacks and the Grenfell Tower fire. According to the BBC, all three were recommended by Baroness Casey following recent engagement with victims, and they are expected to meet with survivors later this week.
The inquiry is set to be a three-year statutory investigation with a budget of £65 million. It will have sweeping legal powers under the Inquiries Act, including the authority to compel witnesses to testify and require organizations to hand over documents and records. The scope is both national and local: the panel will oversee a series of targeted investigations in areas where serious failings are suspected, with Oldham, Greater Manchester, already confirmed as one such location. No area will be able to “resist” an investigation, Mahmood told Parliament, underscoring the government’s commitment to a thorough and unflinching process.
At the heart of the inquiry is a determination to confront the harrowing realities that have emerged from previous investigations. Baroness Casey’s audit, published in January 2025, exposed the scale and brutality of the crimes—multiple sexual assaults, beatings, gang rapes, the transmission of sexually transmitted infections, forced abortions, and the removal of children from victims. The audit did not just highlight the actions of the perpetrators; it also laid bare the “abject failure by the state, in its many forms, to fulfil its most basic duty: protecting the young and vulnerable,” as Mahmood put it. Even more damning were the findings that some in positions of authority “turned a blind eye to the horror, even covered it up.”
One particularly contentious issue has been the recording and analysis of offenders’ backgrounds. Casey’s audit found that in some local areas where data was available, a “disproportionate” number of suspects were from Asian ethnic backgrounds. However, the audit also revealed that ethnicity data was missing in two-thirds of cases, making it impossible to draw robust national conclusions. “This is a major failing,” Casey wrote, and Mahmood has since commissioned new research and pledged to introduce legislation requiring police to collect this critical information. The inquiry’s draft terms of reference, now open for consultation, make clear that it will “explicitly consider the backgrounds of offenders, including their ethnicity and religion, and whether the authorities failed to properly investigate what happened out of a misplaced desire to protect community cohesion.”
Yet, as this sensitive issue is addressed, officials have been at pains to stress that the actions of a minority must not be used to “marginalise or demonise entire communities of law-abiding citizens.” Mahmood told MPs, “There is nothing Muslim or Islamic about the acts that these evil men have perpetrated. It is not behaviour that any of us would accept or tolerate. All of these things are crimes.” She acknowledged the fear among British Muslims that the entire community is being unfairly associated with the crimes, adding, “We should always pursue justice without fear or favour.”
Survivors and their advocates remain cautious. Fiona Goddard, a survivor who resigned from the panel in October, told the BBC that “no one on the panel had any consultations about these candidates,” suggesting that the appointments were “just a box-ticking exercise.” She also raised concerns about Longfield’s recent elevation to the Lords and her ties to the Labour Party, questioning whether the inquiry could be truly independent. Another survivor, who wished to remain anonymous, said she welcomed the appointment but worried, “What if nothing changes? You hear with these big inquiries that recommendations are made, but they're not always implemented.”
Political tensions have simmered around the inquiry from the start. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called for an apology from the prime minister for what he described as “disgracefully smearing those calling for an inquiry as ‘far right’.” He criticized the government for taking so long to launch the investigation and appoint a chair, reading out court sentencing remarks to highlight the gravity of the crimes and the alleged cover-ups by authorities. Liberal Democrat spokesperson Max Wilkinson also welcomed the inquiry but pressed for assurances that it would “remain free from political influence, earn the trust of victims and their families, and avoid stigmatising entire communities.”
The government has pledged to act on all of Casey’s recommendations, including closing loopholes in taxi licensing exploited by abusers, improving data sharing between agencies, and changing the law so that children cannot be deemed to have consented to sex with adults. The National Crime Agency has already launched Operation Beaconport, reviewing more than 1,200 previously closed cases of child sexual exploitation, with over 200 flagged as high-priority rape cases.
Baroness Longfield, for her part, has promised that the inquiry “owes it to the victims, survivors and the wider public to identify the truth, address past failings and ensure that children and young people today are protected in a way that others were not.” She added, “The inquiry will follow the evidence and will not shy away from difficult or uncomfortable truths wherever we find them.”
As the inquiry’s terms of reference are finalized and its work begins in earnest, survivors and the public alike will be watching closely to see whether this “moment of reckoning” finally delivers the truth, accountability, and change that have been so long denied.
