New report calls for Blackpool to be included in national grooming gang inquiry

Plus: Where Blackpool scored in council climate rankings and 'root cause of toxic culture' at Blackpool Vic is convicted of 12 counts of sexual assault

Hello and welcome to our latest edition of The Blackpool Lead.

We hope you had a good longest day and while that may have been bright, I’m afraid there’s a dark cloud over our report this morning - as we look at a senior councillor’s assessment of child exploitation and grooming in the town.

The town’s Conservative leader Paul Galley says he has spent months compiling a dossier into the state of child sexual exploitation and county lines gangs activity in Blackpool. His intervention comes as this week has been dominated by the government deciding to proceed with a national inquiry into grooming gangs - and it’s worth a read of The Lead’s Westminster Editor Zoë Grünewald’s powerful writing about what needs to sit at the heart of any response to tackling grooming and protecting children.

The Galley Report has drawn a furious response from the Labour leader of Blackpool council, Lynn Williams, who has accused him of trying to make political gain off the back of child exploitation. She has encouraged him to work with the council to tackle the challenges.

Elsewhere in this edition, we report on the ‘root cause of toxicity’ at Blackpool Victoria Hospital being convicted of sexual assaults. Next week we’ll have a report on what hospital bosses failure to get control of top surgeons and consultants behaviour may have been doing to the performance of the hospital when it comes to actually achieving the health aims to should be doing.

And for paid subscribers we dig into where the town ranks when it comes to new council climate scoring which came out this week.

‘Blackpool still has a terrible problem with the sexual exploitation of children’

Credit: DavidDixon

By Michael Holmes

Blackpool continues to be a hunting ground for paedophile child groomers, years after the high-profile disappearances of schoolgirls Paige Chivers and Charlene Downes, it has been claimed.

There have been almost 1,750 sex offences against children between 2021 and 2024 - an average of about one a day - but even that figure is the “tip of the iceberg”, senior resort councillor Paul Galley has claimed.

That equates to about one in every 14 youngsters in the town.

And nobody appears to know how many perverts have been caught up in a major crackdown on grooming gangs in Blackpool since it was launched more than 20 years ago, it has emerged.

Galley, opposition leader at the town hall, has spent months compiling a report into child sexual exploitation (CSE) and county lines gangs.

He released it days after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a national inquiry into grooming gangs and urged the Home Office to include Blackpool in it.

“Blackpool has never had a formal inquiry into child sexual exploitation, despite years of warning signs,” Galley said.

“It’s clear that Blackpool still has a terrible problem with the sexual exploitation of children.

“The scale of the problem is staggering - and unique challenges facing coastal communities like ours must not be overlooked.”

He continued: “This isn’t a problem confined to one race, background or religion. It cuts across all of society. That’s why I’m urging the Government to ensure Blackpool is included in the national inquiry.”

The Home Office did not respond when asked by The Blackpool Lead if Blackpool will be included in the national inquiry.

The town’s two Labour MPs, Chris Webb for Blackpool South and Lorraine Beavers for Blackpool North and Fleetwood, who in January both voted against a failed Tory bid to have the Government set up a national inquiry, also did not respond to requests for a comment.

Blackpool has been haunted by the disappearances of Charlene Downes, who was 14 when she vanished from under the North Pier in 2003, and Paige Chivers, who was 15 when she was reported missing in 2007.

Paige’s killer, Robert Ewing, a self-confessed neo-Nazi and a paedophile who groomed the youngster before murdering her, was caught. He died in prison in 2022.

No one has been convicted over Charlene’s death, despite two high-profile court cases and an investigation that remains ongoing.

Police believe Charlene was one of 60 girls in Blackpool - with some as young as 11 - who had been groomed by Pakistanis.

The girls were given food and cigarettes by male takeaway workers in exchange for sex, it emerged after Charlene’s disappearance.

Paige and Charlene’s bodies have never been found.

Responding to Starmer’s announcement of a national inquiry, which followed a major review by Baroness Casey into grooming gangs and led to accusations of a U-turn by Tory critics, Charlene’s mother Karen said: “I’m no fan of the Prime Minister but hopefully some good will come out of it.

“But this has been going on for so long. I’d never heard of grooming gangs when Charlene went missing. I was shocked by the scale of it.

“Hopefully this inquiry will shed more light on it and more will be done.”

Galley’s report, addressed to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, says Blackpool “experiences disturbingly high rates of CSE, a situation compounded by severe deprivation, a large population of looked-after children and a transient demographic driven by its tourism economy”.

It adds: “Blackpool’s high levels of poverty, coupled with its reliance on seasonal and temporary work create a perfect storm in which vulnerable children and young people are particularly susceptible to exploitation.”

Charlene and Paige’s disappearances “paint a deeply troubling picture - not just about the specific cases but about the town’s wider social context”, the report says.

“These incidents, while tragic in their own right, highlight broader systemic issues that have plagued Blackpool for years.

“The town’s abundant supply of low-cost accommodation, amusement arcades and other unmonitored spaces further exacerbates this issue. These areas, often under minimal surveillance, provide ideal environments for predators to target vulnerable individuals.

“The high levels of substance abuse, coupled with the presence of criminal gangs, make Blackpool particularly susceptible to child exploitation networks.”

The report goes on: “Since 1999, Blackpool has produced numerous reports on CSE, yet despite these efforts there has been no co-ordinated strategy to connect these findings or address the town’s long-standing history of abuse.

“Aside from occasional interventions from Ofsted, there has been little to no systematic follow-up or progress on tackling this issue comprehensively.”

The Blackpool Lead asked Ofsted, the education watchdog, a number of questions, including around safeguards in place to protect vulnerable children from exploitation.

It also asked if the regulator had raised concerns about any children’s homes or local authority safeguarding services in Blackpool recently, and if it would support a review of safeguarding practices in the town in light of the report’s findings.

A spokesperson said Ofsted “cannot comment on the report - I suggest you approach Blackpool Council”.

They said: “However, safeguarding children is our top priority. In our inspections we will review the home’s response to concerns like sexual or criminal exploitation. We will be expecting homes to be working with placing local authorities and local partners to have care plans which make individual children safer and which respond to the changing risks and vulnerabilities of the children in their care.

“If we were concerned about the safety of a child during a children’s home inspection, we would follow our enforcement policy - which would involve working with the police and local authority to keep the child safe.”

Ofsted said it urges “all schools, care homes, local authorities and their police, health and wider partners to always assume it does happen here and to make sure their arrangements respond accordingly”.

Police and social services launched the Awaken Project in Blackpool a year after Charlene Downes’ disappearance.

At the time, top cop Andy Rhodes, who is now retired, described it as a “major offensive to tackle adults who lured vulnerable children into prostitution and crime”, Galley’s report says.

Asked how many children the scheme has supported since being set up, the council’s children’s services team was unable to say with any accuracy because figures were initially recorded in paper files, though from January 2021 to December 2024 it was 374.

The team is currently supporting 37 people, including two receiving further support as adults.

Galley asked children’s services how many people have been prosecuted as part of Awaken and was told to ask Lancashire Police, which told him it does not know and he should ask the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). But the CPS said it does not know either.

Galley’s report says: “Established in 2004, Awaken was the town’s primary multi-agency safeguarding unit for tackling child sexual exploitation.

“However, officials stated that only records from 2020 onwards are available in digital format. Earlier data is paper-based, stored in archives and reportedly inaccessible.

“As a result, nearly two decades of the team’s work cannot be properly evaluated, raising serious concerns about accountability, transparency and the ability to assess the effectiveness of one of Blackpool’s most critical safeguarding initiatives.

“Without evidence of how many children have been protected, how many perpetrators successfully prosecuted as a result of their work, how do we measure the effectiveness of Awaken?”

The full response from Blackpool Council to the Galley report and defence of Awaken project

Blackpool Council pointed out that all areas of the country will naturally form part of the national inquiry.

But it said it will co-operate if evidence suggests there should be a focus on the town.

Asked by The Lead why there has been no formal inquiry into CSE in the resort, town hall bosses said the authority has focused on investing in services to spot the risks of exploitation and support victims.

A spokesperson said: “A statutory inquiry that spans the statutory partnership responsible for this complex and challenging issue can only be initiated by government and we welcome the evidence based decision for a focused national inquiry and will fully co-operate with any requests made of the council through this process.”

An assessment in November, which looked at the partnership between the council, police and health service, found that: “When children are identified as being at risk of child exploitation, they benefit from the support of a multidisciplinary specialist team called Awaken.

“This is a highly valued team whose members are making a positive impact in the support and reduction of risk for these highly vulnerable children and young people.

“It is impressive that the service has expanded to offer support for young people up to 24 years old. The reach and accessibility to children and young people is widened by the provision of outreach support out of office hours and at weekends.”

It added: “The Awaken team has a culture of learning and high ambition and is led by capable, knowledgeable and experienced managers.

“Effective systems are in place which include daily and weekly meetings to review risk and progress. “

Through these, professionals make sure that complex risks to children receive continued multi agency oversight.

“The recent addition of a single point of contact for schools and five alternative educational provisions has made a positive start to offering prevention as part of the ‘front door’ response to child criminal and sexual exploitation.”

Asked how the council plans to address the systemic issues raised in Galley’s report, including the concentration of high-risk housing and children’s homes, a spokesperson said: “The council has already taken action to halt the development of children’s homes in Blackpool by introducing additional planning requirements.

“We work closely with the regulator, Ofsted, to ensure that action is taken promptly on homes that are not operating within the legal framework.

“The council has long lobbied to improve the housing quality available to our community and we can see this being delivered with selective licensing, housing-led regeneration in the Central area and the year-on-year delivery of good quality social and affordable homes.

“Awaken remains our main expert partnership across the system to address CSE in Blackpool.”

‘Work with us rather than scoring cheap political points on the backs of exploited children’

Galley’s report and interest has drawn a stern response from the Labour leader of Blackpool Council.

Councillor Lynn Williams responding to Galley’s report told The Blackpool Lead: “We have read the report with interest, and there is no doubt that there are some concerning figures and issues quoted.

“It is interesting that Cllr Galley is suddenly portraying himself as an expert in all issues relating to CSE. He appears to have received his information from a Freedom of Information request from police data. He has not sought to ask questions at a Council Scrutiny meeting, of me as Leader of the Council, the Portfolio Holder for Children, or the Director of Children’s Services. As a result Cllr Galley has not questioned the information he has received, which show that the number of Registered Sex Offenders is actually 1,371 for the whole of the West Division for the police, not just Blackpool. This is a much higher population area than Blackpool alone, spanning Wyre, Fylde, Lancaster and Morecambe.

“The number in this wider population is still higher than the national average and certainly more than anyone would want to see, but it is 2% of all registered sex offenders in a much larger population than just Blackpool. That larger population represents 0.7% of the UK, not 0.2%.

“If Cllr Galley had a genuine interest in making Blackpool a safer place for our most vulnerable residents, in particular our children, he would work with us to do so, rather than trying to make cheap political points. Protecting children is the most important thing we do, party politics have no place here.

“We absolutely accept that Blackpool has challenges that can impact on children and young people, but we do need to balance those challenges with the strengths and positive opportunities that we have and are growing across our communities, our public services and our businesses.

“We closely monitor risk and demand in Blackpool with our policing colleagues that helps us collectively plan for and respond to the needs of children and families.

“Child sexual exploitation is an issue across a range of areas and where more exploration and work is required, it needs to be partnership wide and go beyond individual local authority borders to get to the learning for all organisations, secure justice for victims and protect children from harm.

“We continue to make sure that as an authority we are doing all we can to support victims, disrupt criminals who exploit our children and advocate for national change that can support children and families to thrive.”

Police response and should Blackpool be included in national inquiry?

A Lancashire Police spokesperson told The Blackpool Lead the force is “committed to preventing child sexual abuse, helping victims and bringing offenders to justice”.

They said: “It is a crime that can affect any children, anytime, anywhere - regardless of their social or ethnic background.

“We will continue to put victims and survivors at the heart of our work, relentlessly pursue those who cause harm and do everything in our power to prevent these devastating crimes.

“Every child has the right to grow up safe from harm. We owe it to them, and to those whose lives have already been affected, to deliver the protection and justice they deserve.”

The force did not say, when asked, what proactive steps it has taken to disrupt and dismantle grooming gangs operating in Blackpool, nor did it publicly back Galley’s call for the resort to be included in the national inquiry.

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‘The root cause of a toxic and sexualised culture at Blackpool Victoria Hospital’

In May last year we reported on how a former heart surgeon at Blackpool Victoria Hospital had been charged as part of a sexual assault probe at the Vic.

Dr Amal Bose was this week convicted of 12 counts of sexual assault against five female members of staff during half-a-decade.

Lancashire Police say during the course of the trial he was described as 'the root cause of a toxic and sexualised culture at Blackpool Victoria Hospital'.

Dr Amal Bose Pic: Lancashire Police

Dr Bose's behaviour included touching women inappropriately and making sexualised comments.

His actions so affected his victims they would move roles to avoid him, change their work patterns or call in sick.

A jury found him guilty despite his claims he was 'only flirting' and it was 'banter'.

The 55-year-old, of Main Road, Thurnham, Lancaster, was cleared on two other counts of sexual assault.

He will be sentenced in September.

His conviction follows further problems with for Vic about its workplace culture when Aloaye Afakhade Foy-Yamah, as we reported in March, was sacked for rape but not struck off and faced no criminal proceedings from police.

Blackpool remains ‘below average’ on tackling climate change

By Jamie Lopez

Blackpool Council has improved its performance on climate action but remains below the national average, according to new research.

Environmental charity Climate Action UK this week published the second edition of its Council Climate Action Scorecards, which it describes as the only holistic analysis of all UK councils’ climate action.