Police forces have more staff working with HR departments than specially trained officers to tackle grooming gangs, The Telegraph can reveal.
Around 1,000 police officers in England and Wales have been trained by a dedicated task force set up to stop the gangs that was established almost two years ago.
At the same time, Home Office figures suggest more than 1,700 officers working in support functions are currently in roles with HR and corporate development.
Critics have questioned why more resources are not diverted to tackling grooming gangs amid a growing row over the scandal which saw dozens of vulnerable girls abused across the country, primarily by British-Pakistani gangs.
Sir Keir Starmer, who was head of the Crown Prosecution Service at the height of the grooming scandals, is under growing pressure to grant a fresh inquiry, with Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Manchester, backing one this week.
The Prime Minister was accused of cowardice this week after Labour MPs lined up to vote against Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s call for a new investigation.
Labour has claimed victims want the government to implement the recommendations from previous inquiries, rather than commission a new one, while the task force works to root out offenders.
Led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and supported by the National Crime Agency, the grooming gangs task force is a full time, operational police unit funded by the Home Office.
It was set up by then prime minister Rishi Sunak in April 2023 and works with all 43 police forces in England and Wales to support child sexual exploitation and grooming investigations.
Currently, the taskforce has trained 1,000 officers to deal specifically with grooming gangs, the National Police Chiefs Council say.
However, this figure is dwarfed by Home Office data analysed by The Telegraph showing that more police resources appear to be concentrated on areas such as traffic control – which takes up 3,900 officers’ time – as well as the 1,745 in human resources and corporate development.
Greater Manchester Police had 68 officers in HR adjacent roles, West Mercia Police had 18, Thames Valley had 51 and West Yorkshire 122 – all forces that have dealt with grooming gangs in their area.
Richard Tice, Reform MP for Boston and Skegness, said there was “no need for that many people to be working with HR”.
“Why don’t they retrain to become grooming gang specialists?”, he added.
Dropping cases ‘like a hot potato’
Previous independent inquiries have found that police failed to pursue Asian grooming suspects over fears they would be branded racist.
In Telford, Shropshire, where more than 1,000 girls were sexually abused by gangs of Asian men over three decades, police were described as dropping cases like a “hot potato” to avoid inflaming racial tensions.
One witness told an inquiry how West Mercia Police had appeared “frightened to question or challenge because they didn’t want to have the finger pointed at them, saying they were being racist”.
The NPCC said that alongside the 1,000 specially trained officers, more than 11,000 officers are dedicated to helping vulnerable people, which involves progressing investigations relating to child sexual abuse and exploitation.
An NPCC spokesman said: “There are dedicated protecting vulnerable people/child protection teams in every police force in England and Wales.
“Part of this highly specialised role is to progress investigations relating to child sexual abuse and exploitation.
“It wouldn’t be accurate to compare the HR figure from the Home Office to those employed by hydrant/taskforce.”
They added: “All police officers are equipped with the skills, knowledge and expertise to initially respond and obtain first disclosures from victims survivors subject to child sexual abuse and exploitation, including abuse by grooming gangs.
“There are, of course, specialist officers within forces who are equipped with further training which builds upon and further enhances existing skills and knowledge by providing them with detailed further awareness of child sexual abuse and exploitation”.
Elon Musk criticises Sir Keir
Separate figures, also revealed by The Telegraph on Friday, showed that grooming gangs are behind almost two child sexual abuse offences a day reported to police.
Data from all 43 forces in England and Wales show there were 717 child sexual exploitation “grooming” crimes recorded by police in 2023 and 572 in the first nine months of 2024.
Fury over the grooming gangs scandal reignited in recent weeks after Elon Musk, the US tech billionaire and key ally of Donald Trump, repeatedly posted criticism of Sir Keir over the issue on X, his social media platform.
Mr Musk led an outcry after Labour blocked a fresh inquiry into the Oldham child grooming scandal, suggesting that Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, who refused to back an investigation, was trying to protect the Prime Minister.
Sir Keir previously admitted that a generation of vulnerable girls had been let down by the justice system while he was the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Speaking in 2012 after the Rochdale grooming scandal, Sir Keir said perpetrators had escaped justice for decades because of the failure of the authorities to take the abuse seriously.
His comments came after it was revealed that the CPS, under his leadership, had dropped a case against a rape gang despite overwhelming evidence of their guilt.
Victims were routinely ignored by the police and social services and when their complaints were taken seriously prosecutors often concluded that there was not a realistic prospect of conviction. Police claimed that one of the reasons they did not pursue cases was because they did not believe prosecutors would take it seriously.
In October 2022, Professor Alexis Jay’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse warned that the Government must act urgently on a “national epidemic” of child sex abuse, but it did not focus specifically on grooming.
A review of the abuse in Oldham was released in 2022, but its terms of reference only stretched from 2011 to 2014. Over time, details have come to light about abuse in Telford, Rochdale and Rotherham – which was the subject of a 2014 inquiry, also by Prof Jay.