Hamzah: Questions the report didn’t answer

Edward Timpson said he had “deep concerns” about the document.

Mr Timpson demanded that Bradford’s Safeguarding Children Board answer 10 key questions missing from the report.

He said the answers to the “glaring absences” from the review must be made public to “ensure such mistakes will not be repeated in the future”.

In a letter to the chair of the board, Mr Timpson said• “I have deep concerns over the Hamzah Khan serious case review.

“In particular, I am concerned that it fails to explain sufficiently clearly the actions taken, or not taken, by children’s social care when problems in the Khan family were brought to their attention on a number of occasions.”

Here are some of the key questions asked by Mr Timpson following the publication of the review.

• He questioned whether or not one of Hamzah’s siblings was assessed by social care workers after reporting domestic violence to the police in December 2006;

• He asked whether one of Hamzah’s siblings was assessed in March 2007 after being placed in foster care for two nights before being returned home;

• In May that year the same child was injured while running away from his father and was referred to social services by A&E workers, but the document does not state whether the youngster was assessed by children’s social care workers, Mr Timpson said;

• He asked why no assessment was carried out in April 2009 after police reported to social care that Hamzah’s mother Amanda Hutton appeared to be “under the influence”;

• He also questioned why an assessment was not conducted in January 2011 when the school of one of Hamzah’s siblings reported low attendance rates and that the child “appeared physically neglected”.

Mr Timpson added: “From the SCR (serious case review), I can see that children’s social care made a number of visits to the children’s home. What is unclear is the outcome of these visits, whether any conversations took place with the children and whether there was any follow-up. If no action was taken, why not?

“All of these were missed opportunities to protect the children in the house.

“It is tragic beyond words that by the time a health visitor did trigger concerns about the whereabouts of the younger children in the household, who were missing from health and education services altogether, Hamzah Khan was already dead.

“It is essential that answers to the questions above are put into the public domain so that the people of Bradford and the public are reassured that you have been clear enough about the past to ensure that such mistakes will not be repeated in future.”

• The Hamzah Khan report in full