Hamzah was failed 10 times

A serious case review into the death of Hamzah Khan, whose decomposed body lay undiscovered in his home for almost two years before being found in 2011, was described as having “glaring absences” by children’s minister Edward Timpson and branded a “whitewash” by a city MP.

The body responsible for the report, which was published weeks after Hamzah’s mother Amanda Hutton was jailed for 15 years for his manslaughter and neglecting five of her other children, said he was “let down before and following his death” by systems that should have protected him.

On one occasion in 2007, two years before Hamzah’s death, his sibling made a complaint of physical and emotional abuse which was interpreted by social workers as “teenage angst” rather than something more serious.

But officials involved in the report insisted there were never any concerns raised about the family that “met the threshold” for statutory action by social workers.

And Bradford council’s head of children’s services said no one individual was responsible for failing to protect Hamzah, adding no-one in her department would lose their job.

Within minutes of the review being published the Department for Education revealed that Mr Timpson had written to Bradford’s Safeguarding Children Board to express his “deep concern” at its analysis.

He said: “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.”

He cited 10 “missed opportunities”, where action was not taken or assessments of Hamzah and his siblings were not carried out, which he said the authors of the serious case review did not look into for further details.

Mr Timpson said: “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 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.”

Responding to the criticisms, Professor Nick Frost, who chairs the board which commissioned the report and was set up to protect vulnerable children in the city, denied the review was a whitewash. He said: “I will undertake the action requested by the minister. We are totally committed to transparency in this case.”

Bradford West MP George Galloway called for a “thorough, independent and urgent inquiry” into the failure to protect Hamzah and described the serious case review as “social workers investigating themselves”.

He said: “We are expected to believe from this review that despite numerous inquiries and alerts, from neighbours, the involvement of the police, teachers, social services, despite the obvious signs from the house, the smell which was overpowering, the state of the other children, that the death of Hamzah Khan could not be predicted.

“Well what could be predicted, and I did, is that those investigating this deeply sad and troubling death, would thoroughly coat themselves in whitewash, which they have done.”

Alcoholic Hutton was living in “breathtakingly awful” conditions with five of her young children as well as Hamzah’s mummified remains when police entered her house in September 2011.