Overview
- Fresh local practice reviews published this year document girls found with adult men, assaults in hotels, long delays to interviews and medicals, and cases closed without key evidence being examined.
- HM Inspectorate reported in 2024 that the Met’s response to exploited children was frequently poor and found in a 2025 revisit that leads in a hotel grooming case went unpursued for weeks despite intelligence about other children at risk.
- Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley now says there is a steady flow of live multi‑offender child sexual exploitation investigations and a very significant number of cases likely to be reinvestigated.
- The Home Office’s NCA‑overseen Operation Beaconport has already flagged more than 1,200 closed group‑based exploitation cases for review.
- The Met says it has improved training and data but describes London’s group‑based abuse picture as more varied than elsewhere, as campaigners and practitioners challenge official framing that emphasized county lines over sexual exploitation.