FEWER than one in four grooming gang suspects were arrested in the early stages of police investigations last year.
And the ethnicity of suspects was recorded only in a third of cases.
The damning statistics have been released today in a National Police Chiefs’ Council report.
It shows that 4,450 group-based child sexual exploitation offences were documented by 44 police forces in 2024.
Of those, 761 were committed by grooming gangs.
Suspects were arrested in just 23 per cent of these cases within the first 12 weeks.
Assistant chief constable Becky Riggs, NPCC lead on child protection, said: “Child sexual abuse and exploitation — especially when perpetrated by organised networks — is complex, multifaceted, and deeply challenging to investigate.”
This week, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced that, in the wake of the grooming gang scandal, she wanted forces to publish the ethnicity of offenders.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “You cannot protect children, you cannot spot patterns, and you cannot confront grooming gangs if two thirds of the data simply isn’t there.”
The Home Secretary said full disclosure is the “best way” to tackle conspiracy theories as she announced Dame Anne Longfield, a former children’s commissioner, would head the national inquiry.
Child sex abuse cases as a whole hit a record 122,768 last year — a six per cent increase from 2023.
The real figure is likely to be much higher, as an estimated nine in 10 offences are not reported.
