Terms of reference: inspection of the police response to child sexual exploitation in England and Wales

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services will carry out a thematic inspection of how the police respond to child sexual exploitation in England and Wales. 

Our inspection is designed to answer the following overarching questions:

How effectively do the police and other law enforcement bodies respond to victims and perpetrators of group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE)? And how do their responses influence investigations and the ways in which children are safeguarded? 

In our inspection, we will assess how effectively the police and other law enforcement bodies respond to group-based child sexual exploitation. We will do this by examining current practices in policing and law enforcement throughout England and Wales. We will also assess how effectively the police and other law enforcement bodies respond to victims and deal with perpetrators. In our inspection, we will focus on: 

• police assessments on the nature and scale of offending, and their collections of data on the characteristics of group-based CSE perpetrators; 
• the attitudes of the police and law enforcement bodies towards victims of group-based CSE; and 
• the quality of criminal investigations. 

We will publish our findings in due course.