Source: His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published on this website Wednesday 26 February 2025 by Jill Powell
The Metropolitan Police Service has made positive progress in how it tackles the sexual and criminal exploitation of children, but more improvements are required, the police inspectorate has said.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) said that through a renewed focus on child exploitation, its links to missing children and the language officers and staff use, the service has made improvements since its previous inspection.
These improvements include:
- how it assesses and investigates the risk to missing children and crimes involving exploited children.
- its supervision of cases, making sure the child is the focus of investigations and better communication with child victims.
- ensuring its audit processes identify victim-blaming language and increased activity to help eradicate it; and
- better oversight arrangements for its response to missing children and use of innovative techniques to help find them more quickly.
However, HMICFRS said that the service still has more work to do to improve further in these areas and to provide a consistently good service.
For example, inspectors described several examples where cases of missing children were graded incorrectly. In some cases, the service didn’t do enough, or act quickly enough, to find children. The inspectorate also said that there were too many missed opportunities to follow lines of enquiry to trace offenders.
HMICFRS found that the service still has problems in complying with the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime and rarely carries out initial victim needs assessments. This can have a negative effect on the service a victim receives throughout the criminal justice system.
Constabulary Lee Freeman said:His Majesty’s Inspector of said:
“Children who go missing from home, or are at risk of exploitation, are some of the most vulnerable in society. Public services including the police have a shared responsibility to look for the warning signs, be alert to the risks and act quickly to protect children. But when we inspected the Metropolitan Police Service in 2023, it wasn’t doing enough when children were suffering from, or at risk of, exploitation. We issued three causes of concern.
“I am therefore pleased to report that the senior leadership response to the issues we raised has been positive, and we have closed the causes of concern. The decision by His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, Sir Andy Cooke, to return the service to our default phase of monitoring, was supported by these closures.
“The service’s children’s strategy now sets out the commissioner’s ambition to adopt a ‘child first’ approach. This aims to make sure officers and staff recognise that children are different to adults and should be treated differently because they have different needs and vulnerabilities. However, the service still has more work to do to improve further and to provide a consistently good service. We will continue to closely monitor its progress.”
Get the report The Metropolitan Police Service’s handling of the sexual and criminal exploitation of children: Causes of concern – revisit
