EXCLUSIVE: A MyLondon FOI investigation found there was a three-year grooming gang probe in West London
Hounslow Leader Addresses Grooming Gang Allegations
Hounslow Council failed to disclose a three-year police probe into an alleged West London grooming gang that was dropped last year, despite being asked if there were recent concerns in the borough, a MyLondon investigation has found.
This week, the leader of Hounslow Council, Councillor Shantanu Rajawat called for ‘striking a balance’ between being ‘publicly serious’ and ‘creating panic’ when asked about a Freedom of Information (FOI) response to MyLondon, released in February this year, which showed the local authority knew of a 2021 to 2024 multi-borough Met Police investigation affecting a Hounslow resident.
In June, Hounslow opposition leader Cllr Peter Thompson asked ‘Whether any concerns of this nature, relating to group-based child sexual exploitation, have been identified or raised in Hounslow in recent years?’. A Hounslow Council officer assured him ‘there are no concerns around organised/group sexual exploitation of young people by men/harmers’.
Hounslow Council did not clarify the apparent disparity between what the council officer said and what our FOI requests uncovered, but have since stated ‘we were aware of an ongoing investigation in relation to a single Hounslow child’. The Met did not explain why the investigation was closed. The Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan has said there are ‘no reported cases or indication of these sorts of grooming gangs’ in the capital.
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We asked every London borough about sexual grooming gangs and group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE) in January and August this year. Most local authorities refused to answer, citing the cost of performing manual checks on children’s files, or because the information is not held. However, the London Borough of Hounslow did respond to two of our requests.
Hounslow’s responses described ‘one historic case reported this year’ and ‘one current grooming gang’ with an unknown number of children who are known to other local authorities. The second response said: “We are aware of one report of a sexual grooming gang that was investigated by the police in Hounslow and other boroughs between 2021 – 2024.”
We put these FOI responses to the council on Monday (September 15) at 10:30am, but it took their communications team more than 75 hours to provide an explanation. In that time, our reporter sent 13 emails, made countless phone calls, and attended a council meeting in person, determined to get answers directly from the council and its leader Cllr Rajawat.
During that meeting, Cllr Rajawat said his administration took the issue ‘very seriously’, and that the alleged grooming gang case ‘wasn’t just Hounslow, it was multi-borough’, adding later that ‘behind the scenes there is a lot of work going on’.
After failing to respond to our enquiries about the FOIs for three days, on Thursday (September 18) afternoon, a council spokesperson said its February FOI response “should not be taken to mean that there was a grooming gang in Hounslow, but that we were aware of an ongoing investigation in relation to a single Hounslow child”.
The spokesperson continued: “That investigation was subsequently closed and we understand that no criminal charges were brought. Our September 2025 FOI response refers to this closed investigation.”
In a 2014 report titled ‘Learning and Reflections from the Rotherham experience of Child Sexual Exploitation’, Hounslow Council’s then Head of Safeguarding noted how issues in Rotherham were ‘underplayed’ by senior social care managers, and CSE reports were ‘suppressed’. Hounslow’s report also identified issues with its own Child Protection plans and risk assessments for CSE.
In a 2017 Hounslow Council report titled ‘Child Sexual Exploitation’ (CSE), MyLondon found reference to concerns by the police-led Multi Agency Sexual Exploitation (MASE) panel about a specific group of males ‘grooming young girls’. Police were said to be investigating the group and completing checks on children in semi-independent accommodation.
A Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime (MOPAC) report from 2014/15 also detailed a CSE investigation codenamed Operation Baker, involving care homes, in neighbouring Hillingdon, where five males were convicted of sex offences against four young girls, including for rape and threatening torture.
‘We don’t want to create panic’
By the time MyLondon’s reporter arrived for the council meeting at Hounslow House at 7:30pm on Tuesday (September 16), Hounslow Council’s communications office had failed to respond to our request for comment six times in 36-hours.
Aware of our FOI, Cllr Thompson told the meeting: “There were alleged concerns about grooming gangs in Hounslow, so I’m asking the question now: Will the leader of the council support the creation of a new cross-party initiative that brings together councillors, the police, schools, and community groups to prevent such exploitation, to act swiftly when there are warning signs and ensure lasting support for victims and their families?”
In response, Cllr Rajawat said: “To just start by addressing the very important point made by Cllr Thompson around child exploitation and grooming gangs, and absolutely, Cllr Thompson, you have our absolute assurance we as an administration take this very seriously.
“In the comments you made I would urge a slight amount of caution, because we don’t want to create panic. We know a lot of the cases that are reported are dealt with by a specialist team within the Met. Not locally based, but centrally based, and it is for them to take that forward.
“The case you mentioned in your example, wasn’t just Hounslow, it was multi-borough, across a number of boroughs and it is for the Met to take that forward.
“And we have to strike that balance between absolutely being serious about it, and being very publicly serious about it, and providing the mechanisms to report cases and concerns, without creating panic amongst our communities and that is absolutely important.”
Cllr Rajawat continued: “Having conversations around child exploitation, around grooming, are really really important, with our faith leaders, with our community more widely, so I am happy to sit down with you regularly so you are assured, but also a wider conversation around it in faith settings, in community settings, to really bring it to life.
“I also want to reassure you that behind the scenes there is a lot of work going on. A lot of intelligence that is gathered, analysed and looked at, and that is really important. So I don’t want anyone to leave this room thinking that there is no activity here, it is very very seriously taken, and we do a lot of work around it, working multi agency, but it is, for the most serious cases, for the Met to take forward.”
After the meeting, Cllr Rajawat told MyLondon the council officer’s previous answer to Cllr Thompson was accurate at the time because the case had been closed by then. We pointed out the question had asked about ‘recent years’. Our reporter also suggested ‘not causing a panic’ could be viewed as ‘keeping things quiet’, but Cllr Rajawat repeated: “It’s about striking a balance.”
The Mayor’s response
Assembly Members, spearheaded by Susan Hall AM, have repeatedly asked if there are sexual grooming gangs in London, but the Mayor’s responses have ranged from asking ‘can she define what she means by that?’, to referencing the Met’s work on county lines drugs gangs. The London Assembly has rejected calls for a £4.49million child exploitation inquiry.
Responding to our FOIs this week, the Mayor’s office did not contest them. A spokesperson for the Mayor said: “The Mayor is committed to doing everything in his power to build a safer London for everyone and has always been clear that all violence against women and girls must be treated with the utmost urgency – both by our police and society as a whole.”
When MyLondon approached the Metropolitan Police for more information about the Hounslow investigation, a spokesperson said the force could not look into the FOI responses without details of specific offences.
The mystery of Operation Grandbye
During our FOI probe, we also dug into a December 2017 report by The Independent about an alleged grooming gang operating around a McDonald’s in Stratford, using boys as ‘hooks’ to get the attention of young girls. The article said the youngest arrests included two boys, aged 15 and 16, both on suspicion of robbery, while a 34-year-old man was also arrested on suspicion of rape.
Mayoral records show six months into Operation Grandbye in July 2018, the Mayor’s office answered a question about its progress to a an Assembly Member. The answer described the operation as ‘successful’ with ‘a number of arrests and civil orders’, adding there would be regular meetings about local intel gained from Newham Council and Stratford Shopping Centre.
According to our FOI request, a total of 18 victims were identified; six people were arrested; and three were charged in relation to Operation Grandbye.
When we took our FOI result (given to us by the Met’s information team) to the Met’s press team, along with the name of the detective who was interviewed for the newspaper article, the force did not provide a statement on the outcome of the operation. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) also had no record of the outcome, and specialists in the CPS grooming gang team were not aware of the case.
After some persistent questioning of relevant authorities, it is understood a charge of robbery against one defendant was dismissed; another defendant was jailed for two years for ‘applying a corrosive fluid with intent’; and there was no further action against a third defendant.
MyLondon knows the identities of the defendants – aged 15, 21, and 34 at the time – but has chosen not to disclose them as there is no indication anyone was successfully prosecuted for rape or any other sexual offence.
The only other reference we could find to Operation Grandbye came in a 2021 report by the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, which described it as a response to reports by three underage girls they had been raped by adults they met in a shopping centre. The report said the ‘suspects were identified and arrested for any form of criminality, causing maximum disruption to their activities’.
If you know about what happened in Newham, you can submit information to our form here.
What is a grooming gang?
Asking for data and information about so-called grooming gangs is difficult because it is a term coined by the media; it has been weaponised by the far-right due to a number of Asian and Pakistani men prosecuted in historic cases in northern towns; and it is not one adopted by local authorities, social services, and police forces when they are recording crimes.
The language used by Baroness Louise Casey in her recent audit is ‘group-based child sexual exploitation’, that being when ‘multiple perpetrators coerce, manipulate and deceive children into sex to create an illusion of consent’. While on-street grooming is one modus operandi, groups can also target children using the internet.
While Casey’s audit noted the disproportionate number of convictions for Asian men for this type of sexual exploitation ‘warranted closer examination’, police have also said Asian grooming gangs are not the most prolific and peer-on-peer abuse in a gang environment is more common. Police figures from 2024 showed 85 per cent of group-based child abusers were white.
Defining the same term, the National Police Chiefs Council say: “Group-based sexual offences refer to two or more individuals (whether identified or not) who are known to (or associated with) one another and are known to be involved in or to facilitate the sexual exploitation of children and young people.”
Disturbingly, our investigation revealed even if the Met wanted to establish whether suspects were working together, the information is not easily retrievable from the MPS central searchable databases. The team that handled our FOI told us there is no flag on the system that would highlight related sexual offences where two or more individuals are working together.
As finding out would require a manual review, it exceeded the cost limit to answer our request. This was an issue for across the board when asking police and local authorities for data, even when we narrowed the time frame down to a single year. This suggests: a) the current systems are still not fit for easily spotting patterns; and b) it appears that information has not been extracted already.
‘Organised networks’
When Richard Baldwin, Divisional Director for Children’s Social Care at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, gave evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in 2019, he said there was ‘no evidence’ that children with sexual exploitation cases open in the borough were part of an organised network, but added ‘just because we haven’t seen it doesn’t mean to say it’s not there’.
While it was difficult to find out about ‘grooming gangs’ specifically, some London councils were prepared to share figures on child sexual exploitation when we asked about ‘organised networks’; the term used by Baldwin and adopted by Professor Alexis Jay’s 2022 report that explored the national picture after high-profile grooming gang cases in Rotherham, Rochdale, and Oxford.
Many of the councils responded with overall figures for children at risk of sexual exploitation, however that data would also capture sexual exploitation in a family environment, by individuals, and internet-only offences. Below we have only shared answers where we believe they are relevant to our investigation:
- Barking and Dagenham: One report of organised network CSE made in 2022.
- Barnet: Two reports of ‘potential organised and networked sexual exploitation’ since 2017. A police investigation in 2024 concluded it was not group-based CSE.
- Bexley: 100 cases a year on average since 2016 when searching system for CSE and trafficking factors.
- Camden: 85 reports with ‘organised exploitation considered in CSE risk assessment’ since 2014.
- Enfield: 664 ‘at risk’ of CSE since 2015 (does not specify organised network).
- Greenwich: 172 reports of CSE since 2016 (not specify organised network).
- Hackney: “The way that this information is recorded in our data system means that we are unable to distinguish between cases where young people have self disclosed sexual abuse and who has perpetrated this abuse.”
- Southwark: Less than 10 children reported being victims of organised network CSE since 2017.
- Sutton: 17 children reported being victims of organised network CSE since 2020.
- Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea: ‘There are children who may have been identified from outside the borough who are brought into central London but these would have been dealt with by police/home local authority’.
If you know about grooming gangs in London, you can submit information to our form here.
Police whistleblower’s claims
Our investigation comes after former Met Police detective Jon Wedger told the Daily Express he had uncovered the organised sexual exploitation of children in the capital in the 2000s, but was stonewalled by seniors at Scotland Yard when he tried to safeguard children and bring perpetrators to justice.
“I’d actually uncovered kids from the age of nine to 14 that were being trafficked for prostitution on an industrial scale,” Wedger said to the newspaper, backing up the claims with his notebook from the time, contemporary reports sent to seniors, and a detailed statement submitted to the 2022 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
“They were being sold in crack houses, swapped for nine rocks of crack, then taken to hotels to have sex with builders that were working in central London. After that, the kids would then be taken to upmarket Arab restaurants in Mayfair around the Curzon Street, where they would be traded for as much as £2,000 each. That was happening on a daily basis.”
Wedger also claims police bosses blocked detailed reports about child sexual exploitation in Tower Hamlets, Croydon and Westminster.
A Met Police spokesperson said: “Our data shows the most prevalent threat to children and young people in London is criminal exploitation, particularly recruitment into county lines gangs, however we are not complacent to other types of exploitation such as offending by grooming gangs.
“We also accept this type of crime often goes under-reported and we are working to improve the quality of data we hold to ensure it is sufficiently comprehensive to enable us to make a definitive assessment about the issue.
“While this work takes place our priority remains on supporting victims and investigating alleged offences by following the facts without fear or favour.”
After this week’s council meeting, leader of the opposition Cllr Thompson said: “Child sexual exploitation is one of the most appalling crimes imaginable, and it must be confronted wherever it occurs.
“Even the possibility of organised grooming activity demands a tough, united response. We must root out those who prey on the vulnerable, bring every offender to justice and give victims the strongest possible protection and support.”
Want to contact Callum about this story? Please email [email protected] or Signal +447580255582
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