The £65 million probe is investigating how the grooming gangs operated and how public institutions including the police, councils, health services, social care services and schools responded.
Today’s announcement confirms which areas will first face so-called local investigations – where serious failures have been identified in response to child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs.
Former children’s commissioner for England Anne Longfield is heading up the inquiry, which has the legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence and requires organisations to hand over documents.
Any evidence of crimes uncovered will be referred to Operation Beaconport, the national police operation launched last year to review hundreds of previously closed investigations.
Baroness Longfield said: “The inquiry’s task is to find out why this catastrophic failure of the state happened and continues to happen, to establish why victims and survivors of abuse were failed, and to hold to account those institutions and individuals who failed them. Our national accountability hearings will begin before the end of the year.
“There have been many inquiries and reviews into grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation and abuse over the past 20 years, putting forward more than 800 recommendations, many of which have not been implemented.
“These hearings will help us to establish what national institutions and services should have been doing to implement these findings and to protect children from abuse and harm – and what, if any, progress has been made in areas where investigations have taken place.
“We are determined that our work ensures that no further inquiries into grooming gangs will ever be needed.”
