Birmingham and Wales added to grooming gangs inquiry as survivors warn of diluted scrutiny

A national statutory inquiry into child sexual abuse by grooming gangs has widened its scope, announcing targeted local investigations covering Birmingham and Wales.

The inquiry said the two new probes would "examine the sexual abuse and exploitation of children by grooming gangs and the response of organisations responsible for protecting children" in each area.

The additions follow the announcement earlier this year of the first wave of local investigations, in Oldham in Greater Manchester, Bradford and Keighley in West Yorkshire, and London.

It remains unclear whether any further locations will be selected. Survivors whose areas have not yet been named have publicly voiced frustration, saying they fear the inquiry is drifting toward breadth rather than depth at their expense.

Fiona Goddard, who welcomed Birmingham and Wales's inclusion, told the BBC there is clearly evidence from both areas that "need to be properly heard". But she warned the scale of the exercise "must not come at the expense of the depth of investigation", a concern she said was sharpened by the slow progress so far — "we are already almost a year into the inquiry with relatively little progress".

Another survivor, 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 inquiry spanning an area "as enormous and complex as Wales" can be described as a deep dive. She asked: "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?"

Background to the inquiry

The Statutory Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs in England and Wales was announced by former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in June 2025 and began its work in April. It is chaired by former children's commissioner Baroness Anne Longfield.

The chair holds significant legal powers, including the ability to compel individuals and institutions to explain what they "did or did not do to protect children from being sexually abused". Within each selected area, the inquiry will examine both the nature and scale of the abuse that took place.

The inquiry did not launch without controversy. Before it got under way, abuse survivors called on former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to quit, reflecting wider public disquiet about the government's handling of the issue and the pace of official responses to exploitation.

How areas are selected

The inquiry has previously explained that areas are chosen for investigation against a set of published criteria. These include how victims and survivors were treated when they came forward, and whether opportunities to prevent harm were missed.

Applying the same framework to Birmingham, the inquiry said its decision reflected a combination of factors "including victim and survivor experience, indications of prevalence, harm and risk, and public concern".

Panel member Zoë Billingham said the investigation would open up how failures happened at the point of prevention. "We will look carefully at what organisations knew, how decisions were made, how agencies worked together, and why opportunities to protect children were missed", she said.

A distinct focus for Wales

The Welsh investigation carries an additional dimension that will not apply to the English areas. It will also examine the operation of devolved arrangements, and cross-border working between organisations in Wales and England.

That matters because safeguarding responsibility is devolved in Wales, while offending networks and the agencies that confront them often straddle the border. Baroness Longfield said victims and survivors in Wales have waited "too long for answers".

Why the expansion matters

The decision broadens the inquiry's geographic footprint from five local investigations to seven, spanning the West Midlands, Wales, the north of England, West Yorkshire and the capital. Each new area brings its own history of failures, institutional responses and — potentially — further questions about the handling of evidence, the treatment of complainants and the pace of police or safeguarding action.

It also intensifies a debate about capacity. The inquiry's own criteria are designed to identify where harm was most acute, but survivors in unselected areas argue that the very scale of the project risks sidelining individual cases. The contrast drawn by Carly — between a "deep dive" and a sweeping national overview — captures the central tension the inquiry now has to manage.

There is a further practical pressure. Related reporting has previously raised the possibility that vital paperwork connected to the grooming gangs inquiry could be lost, a concern highlighted by MPs, and which speaks to the difficulty of building cases years after the offending began.

For now, the inquiry has offered no timetable for when the Birmingham and Wales investigations will begin their work, nor any clarity on the total number of areas it intends to examine. Survivors in areas still outside the programme are likely to press their case for inclusion, while those in newly selected areas will be watching closely for the depth of scrutiny that the chair and panel members have promised.