South Yorkshire police slammed for failing to protect children from grooming

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary said it had “serious concern” about the quality of protection children receive, despite child sexual exploitation being made a priority by South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner (PCC) and chief constable.

Its report said every one of the force’s 1,700 frontline staff had been given training in how to deal with child sexual exploitation between January and March and that officers working in child protection were “clearly deeply committed to their work”.

It said there had been an increase in the number of offenders prosecuted and that South Yorkshire Police was now working better with other agencies to tackle the problem.

But it said the force’s efforts, including PCC Shaun Wright investing an extra £500,000 a year to pay for 10 detectives and an analyst to tackle child sexual exploitation, had so far seen “mixed success”.

It said: “Many of the staff interviewed for this inspection felt that the emphasis from senior and middle local managers was still more on dealing with offences such as burglary and vehicle crime, rather than child sexual exploitation.

“Local resources, such as the teams which gather and analyse intelligence on different kinds of offending, were not fully supporting child sexual exploitation investigations.

“While there are pockets of good and effective practice, most noticeably, in Sheffield City, the approach taken to tackling this kind of offending varies significantly across the four districts.”

It added that a small number of the case files were not complete, meaning the force is “unable to assess whether child victims are receiving the best possible levels of care and support”.

Roger Baker, HM Inspector of Constabulary for the Northern Region said: “HMIC recognises the commitment of the PCC and chief constable to making child sexual exploitation a force priority.

“However, we have concerns that this is not properly being disseminated across local policing districts, and that as a result, children are not always being adequately protected.

“This situation must not be allowed to continue. It is unarguably of paramount importance that all children in South Yorkshire receive the same high levels of protection, regardless of the policing district in which they live.”

The HMIC report is one of three reviews commissioned earlier this year by Mr Wright into how child grooming offences were dealt with in South Yorkshire after a series of damaging sex abuse revelations.

He announced plans in August to set up a new team of detectives to carry out a wide-ranging investigation of all allegations of historic child sex abuse.

Yorkshire’s chief crown prosecutor has also been asked to review all historic abuse cases in the county where the Crown Prosecution Service was involved to check if charges should have been brought.

In response to the HMIC report, a South Yorkshire Police spokeswoman said: “As HMIC says, we have had mixed success in improving our response to tackling CSE.

“We welcome the report and its findings because it provides us with a series of recommendations about how to further develop our approach and provide the most robust and consistent service to children at risk.

“A significant amount of work has been done in the last year to enhance our performance and do all we can to ensure our children are safe from this type of harm.

“But there is much more we need to do, as HMIC point out, and we absolutely acknowledge this. In particular, we accept that the inconsistency of approach across the four policing districts is unacceptable and it will not continue.

“It is heartening that HMIC recognises the considerable efforts we have made so far. We now intend to build upon this by acting on its recommendations.”

Earlier this year it was revealed that four women are to sue Rotherham council for “systematic failures to protect them from sexual abuse by predatory men” when they were children.

The authority’s deputy leader, Coun Jahangir Akhtar, stepped down over claims he knew about a relationship between a girl in care and a relative who is a suspected child abuser.

Local authorities in South Yorkshire were heavily criticised for being “inexcusably slow” to tackle widespread sexual abuse of children in a recent report by the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Last month PCC Shaun Wright launched a stinging criticism of his force’s recent performance, particularly in the priority areas of burglary and vehicle crime.

He said the progress being made was “extremely disappointing and frustrating” and that bosses “must do more and do it faster” to improve performance.

South Yorkshire Police has recently launched Operation Lockdown to cut the number of burglaries and vehicle crimes in the county, and has already arrested dozens of offenders.

Between January 1 and September 30, 2013 police across the force were involved in 425 investigations into child sexual exploitation. There have been a number of high profile prosecutions and convictions with further cases due to reach court early in 2014.

The 40-page report examined and makes recommendations in areas including leadership, strategies, management, training and intelligence gathering.

Police and crime commissioner Shaun Wright said in response to the report that the current approach to CSE by the force “has to change”.

He said: “The report makes a number of recommendations, with the most urgent to be implemented immediately and others within three and six months.

“I fully support the recommendations and have instructed the Chief Constable that he must ensure they are in place within the time frames set out by the inspectors.”

“The commitment and effort of officers and staff on the front line of this most heinous of crimes is fully appreciated by me and rightly recognised by the inspectors.

“However, there is clearly a failure of management to turn my, and the public of South Yorkshire’s, key strategic priority into operational effectiveness uniformly across the whole force area.”